With a Kiss

"When I got off from the subway, a lady told me the war was over, and I went into the street yelling. I saw the nurse and she was smiling at me, so I just grabbed her." - Glenn Edward McDuffie, sailor pictured in the iconic photograph 'V-J Day in Times Square' by Alfred Eisenstaedt, on Victory Over Japan Day (V-J Day) in Times Square, New York, on August 14th, 1945. 

Unfold the reel
in black and white bustle
a hurray of a kiss
seizes the day.

Times Square, Hollywood romance,
good news a heady current in air:
It's over! War is over!  Sighs, shouts, cries -
and everywhere
the confetti of tears.

Life resumes in revelry,
hearts swoon in applause.
Hello sailor, lost, now found.
Two people take a bow, say
love is the only how.

Hallelujah, horizons ahoy.
World can go on. Life will
go on!

No obelisk or stone statue to remember -
one man and woman’s fame
cemented by impulse, a default affront
to the rigid machinations of war.   

And like Romeo, thus he dies,
with a kiss, with this kiss,
forever on our lips.

Sailor in famous kissing photo dies.

©Siobhán McLaughlin

I'm a writer of poetry and prose and blog at : http://www.a-blog-of-ones-own.blogspot.com

Find me on Twitter at @siobhan347