Kathleen Charlotte Angel Passed Away

July 26, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a name poem using a garden to symbolize a lasting spiritual legacy.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Kathleen Charlotte Angel passed away

A year ago, and all her generations

Tend her private garden. Great-grandchildren

Have planted roses there, and will remember.

Love lasts as song, and does not pass away,

Even in the course of generations,

Even when the roses of the children

New bloom within an arbor none remembers.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Gardens

July 24: There Is a Garden in My Heart

July 25: Sing of Gardeners, Who Nurture Beauty

July 26: Kathleen Charlotte Angel Passed Away

Sing of Gardeners, Who Nurture Beauty

July 25, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a number poem in praise of gardeners.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Sing of gardeners, who nurture beauty,

Invested in the source of civilization!

Xerophytes or hydrophytes, their plants

Take root and flourish by their will, not chance,

Yielding a sweet harvest of sensation.

No artist has more exigent a duty

In capturing the radiance of Creation,

Nor one more apt to make the spirit dance,

Earth turned to human song through cultivation.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/singo8.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Gardens

July 24: There Is a Garden in My Heart

July 25: Sing of Gardeners, Who Nurture Beauty

There Is a Garden in My Heart

July 24, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is about a spiritual garden in which one can find peace.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

There is a garden in my heart

More beautiful than words,

Filled with subtle scents and shades

And the rhapsodies of birds.

I go there to refill my cup,

Or, when I am alone,

To find my favorite rock and trace

The smile upon the stone.

When the wind blows in my heart,

Stirring up the sea,

I turn my back upon the waves

And return to me.

I sit beside a quiet pool

And gaze down at the sky,

And feel a yearning so complete

I cannot help but cry.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Gardens

July 24: There Is a Garden in My Heart

Only in the Prison of Perfection

July 23, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem about the importance of mutual need if a marriage is to last.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Only in the prison of perfection,

Needing neither love nor company,

Your body quite dissolved in pure perception,

One oversoul as far as mind can see;

Unattached to meaning or desire,

Redolent of heaven's thin, cold air,

Empty of an all-devouring fire

Nor interested in being more than there;

Granted such a state, what need for marriage?

All there is, is with you all the while.

Gifts of love redound to those who forage

Earnestly, with neither greed nor guile.

May you hunger and find surfeit sweet,

Each separately an angel incomplete,

Needing one another's love to know

The greatest bliss vouchsafed to those below.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/onlyin.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing

July 21: Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

July 22: Out of Love Comes All in Life That Matters

July 23: Only in the Prison of Perfection

Out of Love Comes All in Life that Matters

July 22, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem about the enormity of the choice to marry.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Out of love comes all in life that matters;

Nor can one love unless one knows one's need.

Years are walls against which passion shatters,

Opening the way for joys that bleed.

Underneath the choice of who is how,

Requiring one again each day to choose,

Embracing a forever ever now,

Not least because one fears what one might lose.

Given its immensity, the choice

Astounds, as blind or provident as fate;

Given its beauty, one can but rejoice,

Evangelist alight before the gate.

More than how one lives is how one loves,

Ever the terrain through which one moves,

Not shaped by fortune, but the work of will,

Though fortune ride the wind for good or ill.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/outofl.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing

July 21: Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

July 22: Out of Love Comes All in Life That Matters

Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

July 21, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem about how the choice to marry goes beyond reason.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Of love and fortune, happiness and choosing:

No reason is enough for such a choice.

You total up the winning and the losing,

Out of which comes no commanding voice.

Underneath the numbers is the need,

Reckless as a snowflake in the wind,

Eden once again by love decreed,

Nor can mere knowledge such sweet hope rescind.

Gifts of grace are given but to those

Amazed enough to step into the light,

Great with wonder at the life they chose,

Embracing it with unabashed delight.

May you choose again each day to love,

Each the gift that does the other move,

Needing always someone who needs you,

That fortune not for one find joy, but two.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/oflove.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing

July 21: Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing2

July 20, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem inviting angels to the celebration.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

On your engagement let the angels sing!

Now let them fill the air with voices strong!

Yield, ye gates that shelter Heaven's throng!

Open up, that they might glory bring!

Unleash the mighty organ tones that ring

Right through the rock beneath your joyous song!

Even to this world of right and wrong

Now come angels past all reckoning!

Granted, after celebration due,

Angels tend to slowly disappear,

Going back behind the golden door

Even as you long for their return.

Music, though, remains behind with you.

Each moment that you listen you will hear

Not them, but from your own unwritten score,

The songs of love no innocent could learn.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/onyou4.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing