since feeling is first

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

::::::::
this poem was read in my wedding ceremony.

when i first met my wife, we geeked out about the things that we loved in common and on our own. when our conversation got to literature... and poetry in particular, john donne and e.e. cummings were the poets we obsessed over the most that night.

i would have married her right then and there.