Poetry Thursday - Invisible Kisses by Lem Sissay

Poems are like buses: you wait and wait, and nothing comes your way, and then all of a sudden several appear at once. One for now, and the rest for later.

The Guardian has a new podcast called The Start, and on it Lem Sissay is talking about his background and his poem Invisible Kisses - "the 'radical' poem born of heartbreak" and often read at weddings ... a poem with a multifaceted emotional message.

"At 21, Lemn Sissay was in love with and proposed to his then-girlfriend – a fellow student and New Yorker. When the engagement was called off, the poet travelled to her family home to make sense of what had happened and soon felt the weight of his situation compounded by the realisation that he had no family to turn to."

INVISIBLE KISSES
written by Lemn Sissay

If there was ever one
Whom when you were sleeping
Would wipe your tears
When in dreams you were weeping;
Who would offer you time
When others demand;
Whose love lay more infinite
Than grains of sand.

If there was ever one
To whom you could cry;
Who would gather each tear
And blow it dry;
Who would offer help
On the mountains of time;
Who would stop to let each sunset
Soothe the jaded mind.

If there was ever one
To whom when you run
Will push back the clouds
So you are bathed in sun;
Who would open arms
If you would fall;
Who would show you everything
If you lost it all.

If there was ever one
Who when you achieve
Was there before the dream
And even then believed;
Who would clear the air
When it’s full of loss;
Who would count love
Before the cost.

If there was ever one
Who when you are cold
Will summon warm air
For your hands to hold;
Who would make peace
In pouring pain,
Make laughter fall
In falling rain.

If there was ever one
Who can offer you this and more;
Who in keyless rooms
Can open doors;
Who in open doors
Can see open fields
And in open fields
See harvests yield.

Then see only my face
In reflection of these tides
Through the clear water
Beyond the river side.
All I can send is love
In all that this is
A poem and a necklace
Of invisible kisses.

(via)