I don’t think I have ever mentioned that Sara Teasdale is probably my favorite poet ever. Back in high school, I read her collected works, and there was this one poem I memorized. I didn’t own the book, so I had no copy of the poem. I wanted it though, and I searched for it again in every anthology I ever picked up. And, honeys, I picked up many of them over the intervening 25 years, hoping to find this one short poem, to make sure I had it right in my head. I also looked for it on the internet. Today, I literally stumbled across it. I was looking all this time for the wrong title. It’s not called The Kiss, like I thought. It is called The Look.

The Look

by Sara Teasdale

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.

And when I found it, I cried, partly from the joy of finally finding it, and partly because it still echoes my heart. And partly because I had been talking to Colin just this morning. So very powerful, poems, little darts bound up in innocent looking books.

You know, I just deleted a whole lot of writing here. You don’t need to know everything. Some secrets I’ll just keep to myself awhile yet.