Kissing: selected chronicles. Marion Quednau, League of Canadian Poets Chapbook Competition Winner, 1999

Sometimes you can see in a man
a true number of unspent kisses;
these can be measured
in the way he sits, leaning forward
on the bench in the glowing park,
like a man intent on the sound trapped
in a piano, the way he lingers to feed
the one single, circling
squirrel at his feet
(it has a piece missing
from its tail, is torn and bedraggled),
the way he glances at the children
playing nearby
as though he might still have some nestling;
some bestowal of affections
intact, inside himself,
the way he looks neither
to left or right
when he rises to go, but is somewhere
in his thinking beneath the canopy
of trees and sun-sifted sky,
is off by himself
in some act of restoration,
without a vanity or pride
preceding his every move.
This keeping of a particular certainty
to himself, and only himself,
a good sign.