I Do Not Mean to Put Our Love on Hold

August 18, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is breaking up a love affair.

Today’s poem is about not being able to decide whether to break up.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I do not mean to put our love on hold.

I really can't decide what I should do.

I don't like always running hot and cold,

But I don't know yet what I feel for you.

I am afraid of getting too involved

And then, perhaps, of causing greater pain.

It's easier to get this thing resolved,

Yet then I find I'm weeping once again.

If only life were walking on the beach,

Talking, laughing, holding honest hands,

With everything we want just out of reach,

And no sign of the lurking buts and ands.

If I could say just purely the word love,

Or bear to turn my back and say goodbye,

Then you and I could from this moment move,

And let ourselves at last rejoice or cry.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/idono3.html. For more love poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Breaking Up a Love Affair.

August 15: Hold Me to Your Willing Heart

August 16: How Did I Lose Your Baby Blue Eyes

August 17: I Didn’t Get a Chance to Say I Love You

August 18: I Do Not Mean to Put Our Love on Hold

I Didn't Get a Chance to Say I Love You

August 17, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is breaking up a love affair.

Today’s poem is addressed to a former lover about the pain of a breakup.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I didn't get a chance to say I love you.

You were gone before we got that far.

All I know is now I really need you,

Yet when I look for you, you aren't there.

You said once that you never would forget me,

Yet how am I to know without you here?

Such emptiness! Like what I feel within me:

Neither flesh nor tears, just cold thin air.

Sometimes, alone, I feel your arms around me,

And all my need for you spills out in pain.

Jagged memories of you surround me.

I cannot think I won't see you again.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Breaking Up a Love Affair.

August 15: Hold Me to Your Willing Heart

August 16: How Did I Lose Your Baby Blue Eyes

August 17: I Didn’t Get a Chance to Say I LoveYou

Hold Me to Your Willing Heart

August 15, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is breaking up a love affair.

Today’s poem is about the need sometimes to let go of love.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Hold me to your willing heart

And let me - help me - weep

That I of need might fall apart

And then at last might sleep.

Let the truth slice into me

That I might finally bleed

And purge myself of agony

I cannot now concede.

For I have bound myself in light

That I might live in joy,

And cannot - will not - let the night

My bonds of love destroy.

And yet I know if I would gain

The peace for which I pray,

I must allow the floods of pain

To wash my love away.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Breaking Up a Love Affair.

August 15: Hold Me to Your Willing Heart

Forever Is like Getting Off a Train

August 14, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is time.

Today’s poem is about how through the imagination one might step out of time into forever.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Forever is like getting off a train:

Outside the landscape listens, holds its breath;

Racing hedges stop, the mountains pause,

Trees wait on the wind, as still as death.

Yet far off, a whistle sounds again.

So may we, though trapped within our motion,

Imaginatively step beyond its laws:

X's on the surface of an ocean.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Time.

August 8: Forty-Eight

August 9: Bless These Family Gatherings

August 10: The Universe Is One of Many

August 11: The Los Angeles of 1958

August 12: The Past Is Never Over

August 13: Eventually, Memories Settle Down

August 14: Forever Is like Getting Off a Train

Eventually, Memories Settle Down

August 13, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is time.

Today’s poem is about the ubiquity yet elusiveness of the moment.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Eventually, memories settle down;

Later still, perhaps, go back to sleep.

Life cannot hold so much of life for long,

Yet now I hold it dancing in my hands.

Though everything is now, now is not;

Each moment dances in a sea of light.

People were and will be, never are;

Present is a glass through which we wonder.

Everywhere are ghosts that dance in dreams

Rounded by the curvature of time.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Time.

August 8: Forty-Eight

August 9: Bless These Family Gatherings

August 10: The Universe Is One of Many

August 11: The Los Angeles of 1958

August 12: The Past Is Never Over

August 13: Eventually, Memories Settle Down

The Past Is Never Over

August 12, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is time.

Today’s poem is about the continuity of time over generations, over millennia, and the importance of the study of history and pre-history.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

The past is never over, nor

The future ever here.

Shards beneath the sand contain

Old verses of our hymns.

In Time there are no endings, nor

Can lines be very clear.

The bones of ancient hominids

Linger in our limbs.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Time.

August 8: Forty-Eight

August 9: Bless These Family Gatherings

August 10: The Universe Is One of Many

August 11: The Los Angeles of 1958

August 12: The Past Is Never Over

The Los Angeles of 1958

August 11, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is time.

Today’s poem is about how time devours the holy presence of each moment.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

The Los Angeles of 1958

Was obliterated in 1959.

Every house, movie star, palm tree, and freeway

No more. Gone. Nada. Nihil. We say

There are photos, memories--I have mine.

Yet holy presence we cannot recreate.

From desire and dream we make our memories,

Images of images, the stage

Vacant, the quartet long gone, our rage,

Ever, for lies, distortions, uncertainties.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/la1958.html. For more philosophical poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Time.

August 8: Forty-Eight

August 9: Bless These Family Gatherings

August 10: The Universe Is One of Many

August 11: The Los Angeles of 1958