Strong Relationships Require Strength

March 7, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is anniversaries.

Today’s poem is a 7^th anniversary poem about love and will.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Strong relationships require strength.

Each must be the one who makes things work.

Vested in a love, one ought to love,

Embracing what one else would be enduring.

No love survives a marriage but by will.

Years of love accumulate, at length

Evolving into fate. The frantic search

Abates, one finds one’s yes, and it will prove

Resilient. One is settled in one’s mooring,

Singing, yearning, dreaming, dancing still.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

March 6: Freedom Is the Power to Will One’s Fate

March 7: Strong Relationships Require Strength

Freedom Is the Power to Will One's Fate

March 6, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is anniversaries.

Today’s poem is a 48^th anniversary poem about free will and love.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Freedom is the power to will one’s fate.

One chooses like a leaf blown by the wind,

Reversing, flailing, billowing, settling down

There, precisely where one chose to be.

Yet choice is just the ripple of one’s turning.

Embrace with joy that choice made long ago,

In love still, though so differently than then,

Gift of who you were to who you are,

Having willed the grace that now surrounds you,

The world you can’t imagine now not being.

You choose again, again, what you have chosen,

Each year, each day, again the choice to love,

A choice that wills the wonder of what is,

Resonant with happy tears, with laughter,

So beautiful you cannot look for long.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/freed3.html. For more anniversary poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

March 6: Freedom Is the Power to Will One’s Fate

Where Do We Go

March 5, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is death.

Today’s poem is about the mystery of the birth and death of consciousness.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Where do we go when we go to a place

That simply is no place at all?

When we step out of time to become nothing more

Than a memory few can recall?

How can we be when we no longer are?

Or, earlier, not yet have been?

A bit of eternity sits in our souls

Though we live in the house of the wind.

Consciousness comes like a stranger to call,

Both us and yet something quite more.

Where it may come from and where it may go

Is a wonder behind a locked door.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Death

February 27: One Night I Saw Aaron

February 28: I Wish That I Could Bring You to the Lord

March 1: The Only Hope Is that There Is No Hope

March 2: Life Is Beautiful, My Child

March 3: She Died Soon After Many Years of Pain

March 4: This Truth Is like a Sea That Has No Shore

March 5: Where Do We Go

This Truth Is like a Sea That Has No Shore

March 4, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is death.

Today’s poem is about the agony of mourning a loved one killed by a drunk driver.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

This truth is like a sea that has no shore,

Chaos infinite in heart and mind:

That you should once have been, and are no more.

To me you are as lovely as before:

Your voice still sings of life, your eyes still shine.

This truth is like a sea that has no shore,

An agony no reason can endure,

A knot of pain no passion can unbind:

That you should once have been, and are no more.

You died because some drunken bastard bore

Across the barrier of one thin line.

This truth is like a sea that has no shore:

That I cannot your battered face restore;

That all my love for you cannot turn time;

That you should once have been, and are no more.

We are all on a death march, numb and raw,

Driven on as loved ones fall behind.

This truth is like a sea that has no shore:

That you should once have been, and are no more.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Death

February 27: One Night I Saw Aaron

February 28: I Wish That I Could Bring You to the Lord

March 1: The Only Hope Is that There Is No Hope

March 2: Life Is Beautiful, My Child

March 3: She Died Soon After Many Years of Pain

March 4: This Truth Is like a Sea That Has No Shore

She Died Soon After Many Years of Pain

March 3, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is death.

Today’s poem is about the beauty of accompanying someone to the brink of death.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

She died soon after many years of pain,

A remnant of the person she once was.

Yet in the days of peace before her death

We shared a pleasure brief but undismayed.

How strange is time! The precious days so slow

Passed like a sunset seeming without end,

Agonizing in its aching beauty,

Distillate of joy before the darkness.

She was the single parent of three sons,

Leaving them just past the door to manhood,

Herself not old, still ripe with postponed passion,

Never now to know again its treasure.

But love was like a dancer in those days,

Filling every moment with its grace,

An evanescent feeling, yes, but present

As sunlight on a green and open field;

A love that felt just like the pith of being,

Naked and alone, but unashamed,

Knowing with the certainty of sorrow

That life is no more rich than at its end.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Death

February 27: One Night I Saw Aaron

February 28: I Wish That I Could Bring You to the Lord

March 1: The Only Hope Is that There Is No Hope

March 2: Life Is Beautiful, My Child

March 3: She Died Soon After Many Years of Pain

Life Is Beautiful, My Child

March 2, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is death.

Today’s poem is to a child about how the dead live on.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Life is beautiful, my child,

Though many things go wrong,

And you may hear much sadness in

Its strange and lovely song.

Though friends and loved ones die, my child,

They're never really gone.

Nor more nor less than yesterday,

In you they will live on.

They will live on in you, my child,

As everything you see,

Though it must vanish, will remain

Alive in memory.

Alive in what you think and feel

And dream and say and do,

For all who ever were still are

Upon this earth in you.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/lifei2.html. For more poems about death, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/deathpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Death

February 27: One Night I Saw Aaron

February 28: I Wish That I Could Bring You to the Lord

March 1: The Only Hope Is that There Is No Hope

March 2: Life Is Beautiful, My Child

The Only Hope Is that There Is No Hope

March 1, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is death.

Today’s poem argues for the benefits of not believing in a life after death.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

The only hope is that there is no hope,

For then one's vision can adjust to darkness.

Life after death might help a body cope,

But one should savor life in all its starkness.

With Heaven gone, the heavens, free to speak,

Tell us of a universe uncaring,

Vast and violent, with storms that wreak

Havoc on what worlds might be life bearing.

How sweet just to admit that death's the end!

Of course, of course we've known it all along!

Despite millennia of myths, we tend

To doubt when the insistence seems too strong.

This we know: We perish and are gone.

Beneath the moment's fertile soil is stone.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/theon2.html. For more poems about death, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/deathpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Death

February 27: One Night I Saw Aaron

February 28: I Wish That I Could Bring You to the Lord

March 1: The Only Hope Is that There Is No Hope