I Feel as Though a Dam Within Me's Burst

February 27, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is how marriage both needs and creates a community of love.

Today’s poem is about how a love betrayed can become a prison through the family it created.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I feel as though a dam within me’s burst
And yet the water’s solid and won’t flow.
I cannot bear to touch you, even though
I lie beside you praying for the worst.
Everything I’ve cherished now is cursed
By what I know and what I still don’t know.
I’m shut, and neither can nor cannot go.
I need to gather up my furies first.
My love for you lies murdered and unmoved,
Waiting for a wound that will not bleed.
We stay together for the children, yet
It seems a thousand years since we once loved,
And you were still a treasure and a need,
And I a fool whom fate would not forget.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite the poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/ifeela.html. For more poems about marriage, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/marriagepoems.html.

This week’s theme: How Marriage Both Needs and Creates a Community of Love.
Feb. 22: No Marriage Is an Island unto Itself
Feb. 23: Happy Seventh Anniversary
Feb. 24: Forty Years Together You Have Loved
Feb. 25: A Father’s Fiancée
Feb. 26: Angels Just Love Weddings, Don’t You Think
Feb. 27: I Feel as Though a Dam Within Me’s Burst

Angels Just Love Weddings, Don't You Think

February 26, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is how marriage both needs and creates a community of love.

Today’s poem is a wedding poem about a community of angels participating in the ceremony.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Angels just love weddings, don’t you think?
No one sees them, but we know they’re there,
Golden halos lassoing their hair,
Embodying a love beyond the brink.
Love draws them in like revelers to drink,
Alive in love, breathing love like air,
Amorous in ways we could not bear,
Needing us to be love’s earthly link.
Do, then, with an angel’s ecstasy,
Make your lives an amorous delight,
Intimate in ways both sure and sly,
Chaste but in the chamber of your love.
Heaven is not quite a fantasy;
Angels hover near, awaiting night.
Eden was a place where none was shy,
Loving as the naked lust might move.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite the poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/angel6.html. For more wedding poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html.

This week’s theme: How Marriage Both Needs and Creates a Community of Love.
Feb. 22: No Marriage Is an Island unto Itself
Feb. 23: Happy Seventh Anniversary
Feb. 24: Forty Years Together You Have Loved
Feb. 25: A Father’s Fiancée
Feb. 26: Angels Just Love Weddings, Don’t You Think

A Father's Fiancee

February 25, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is how marriage both needs and creates a community of love.

Today’s poem is a wedding poem about how a marriage affects the children of a former marriage.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

A father’s fiancee is
An intended mother.
More than two are joined
This day in joy.
Though two may blossom
By the winged boy’s fountain,
Other flowers are watered
By that love.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite the poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/fafian.html. For more wedding poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html.

This week’s theme: How Marriage Both Needs and Creates a Community of Love.
Feb. 22: No Marriage Is an Island unto Itself
Feb. 23: Happy Seventh Anniversary
Feb. 24: Forty Years Together You Have Loved
Feb. 25: A Father’s Fiancée

Forty Years Together You Have Loved

February 24, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is how marriage both needs and creates a community of love.

Today’s poem is a 40th anniversary poem about how marital love is passed on to subsequent generations.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Forty years together you have loved,
Opening a door to love for me.
Romantic hearts bequeath a harmony
That proves more rich than any life might prove.
Years pour like water rapidly downstream,
Yielding harvests gleaned in fields to come,
Each waiting for the heart to bring it home,
An unsought legacy so long foreseen.
Rejoice, then, in a beauty never gone,
Sustained by songs more sweet because passed on.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite the poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/40year.html. For more anniversary poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: How Marriage Both Needs and Creates a Community of Love.
Feb. 22: No Marriage Is an Island unto Itself
Feb. 23: Happy Seventh Anniversary
Feb. 24: Forty Years Together You Have Loved

Happy Seventh Anniversary

February 23, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is how marriage both needs and creates a community of love.

Today’s poem is a seventh anniversary poem comparing a marriage to a tree within a grove.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Happy seventh anniversary!
A tree now deeply rooted in the soil!
Praised be those whose love is long and loyal,
Pleased to join content with ecstasy.
Yet, as you know, your tree's within a grove,
So every limb and leaf you think is yours
Endures through common legacies and laws,
Vaster than the will of any Jove.
Even so, your love must play its part.
Never think that every casual kiss
That leaves your lips does not increase the bliss
Held for you in some communal heart.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite the poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/happ70.html. For more anniversary poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: How Marriage Both Needs and Creates a Community of Love.
Feb. 22: No Marriage Is an Island unto Itself
Feb. 23: Happy Seventh Anniversary

No Marriage Is an Island unto Itself

February 22, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is how marriage both needs and creates a community of love.

Today’s poem is a poem about marriage that echoes John Donne’s Meditation 17, which begins, “No man is an island …”

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

No marriage is an island unto itself.
It is a piece of a mainland – of a family, of friends, of a community, of history.

Couples tend their gardens, but the water of life comes from elsewhere.
However great their efforts and their love, they cannot thrive alone.

Of each person, the boundaries are uncertain.
Lines are drawn on surfaces, but underneath roots tunnel where they will.
A marriage is but the most intimate intertwining.
So many others – even strangers – burrow into us for sustenance, or give us, unknowing, their nutrients underground.

A great love does not shine on only one small patch of ground,
Nor does love between husband and wife light only the space between the walls of their marriage.
Do not doubt that love felt in the privacy of one’s heart will someday lend a bit of beauty to someone else’s night.

Early in the history of Earth, the air was poisonous, and the land was sand and naked stone.
Later, living things sweetened the air and clothed the land and made it fertile.
Love also must be replenished daily, like soil, like air.
Each bit of love we feel helps all of us to breathe, enables all of us to grow.
No more than one tree can survive alone in a desert, can one marriage survive without a landscape of love.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite the poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/nomarr.html. For more poems about marriage, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/marriagepoems.html.

This week’s theme: How Marriage Both Needs and Creates a Community of Love.
Feb. 22: No Marriage Is an Island unto Itself

So May One Do Good That Does No Good

February 21, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week, in honor of President’s Day, Lincoln’s Birthday, and Washington’s Birthday, is political activism and greatness.

Today’s poem is a number poem about political activity, even when it seems to be in vain.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

So may one do good that does no good
In ways that can be cataloged and measured.
X-rays of the heart show what one would,
Though a thousand protests be withstood.
Yet the act itself is to be treasured.

Each act becomes a word, a poem, a song
In which one writes one's message to one's time,
Giving one's reply to right and wrong,
Having peacefully not gone along,
The bearer of a promise and a sign.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite the poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/somayo.html. For more poems about politics, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/politicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Political Activism and Greatness.
Feb. 15: Greatness Is the Child of Choice and Chance
Feb. 16: Seventy-Six2
Feb. 17: Great Ends Demand Great Sacrifice
Feb. 18: Some Would Have the Courage of Their Dreams
Feb. 19: Greatness Is Effect Far More than Cause
Feb. 20: The President Was Without Precedent
Feb. 21: So May One Do Good That Does No Good