The Summer Is a Desert Between Mountains

August 2, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a love poem about a summer separation.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

The summer is a desert between mountains

Lavish with the joys of spring and fall.

I look across that bleak and lonely wasteland,

Seeing no redemption there at all.

I cannot think how I will cross without you

To reach the golden hillsides of my dreams.

I try not to imagine how I'll miss you,

And not to look too hard at what that means.

Time, the enemy of helpless lovers,

Must compensate at last those it bereaves.

I cannot wait until, once more together,

We can share the blaze of turning leaves.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Summer

July 31: Summer2

August 1: August

August 2: The Summer Is a Desert Between Mountains

August

August 1, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a calendar poem for August about how amid its beauty there are hints of coming darkness.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

August starts to shade a bit towards shade,

Upon the cusp of full tide and retreat,

Grace, poised upon a turning point of time,

Unwilling to welcome what it can’t decline,

Sweet season no foreboding can defeat.

Though evenings earlier begin to fade.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Summer

July 31: Summer2

August 1: August

Summer2

July 31, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a calendar poem about the savagery of nature beneath the slow, tranquil summer days.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Summer lies luxuriant

Underneath a brutal sun.

Mayhem rules the tranquil scene,

Murder nothing can redeem,

Even as days slowly run,

Rich, well-favored, indolent.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/summe2.html. For more calendar poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer

July 31: Summer2

More Love Is in My Heart than Any Heaven

July 30, 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 and love poem in which separated lovers share a garden of love.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

More love is in my heart than any heaven--

Angels, God, and saints--can ever hold.

Though we're apart, I have you in my garden,

Touching you as Time turns into gold.

How could our love long last, to darkness driven,

Except we conjure up our own dear Eden,

With pleasures far more fierce than dreams foretold.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

July 27: Twenty-Eight3

July 28: Sixty-Seven2

July 29: Here We Have a Little Bit of Eden

July 30: More Love Is in My Heart than Any Heaven

Here We Have a Little Bit of Eden

July 29, 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 fourth anniversary poem in which married love preserves the innocence of Eden.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Here we have a little bit of Eden,

An innocence deliberately detained.

Praised be love, that holds the heel of heaven,

Preserving what would else escape from pain,

Yet now renews the heart again, again.

For love depends upon a tended garden

Older than the myth of Adam's fall.

Underneath the usual confusion,

Resisting the implacable illusion

That makes of love a dream beyond recall,

Here it lives within the garden wall.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/herew3.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.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

July 27: Twenty-Eight3

July 28: Sixty-Seven2

July 29: Here We Have a Little Bit of Eden

Sixty-Seven2

July 28, 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 about a private garden’s public good.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Sixty-seven cultivates her garden,

Invested in the beauty of the Earth.

Xerophyte or hydrophyte, her plants

Thrive heartily, unconscious of their worth,

Yielding grace that lifts life’s loneliest burdens.

So does the private serve the public good.

Each gives gifts to all, for good or ill.

Vision is a gift the garden grants,

Enduring through another’s mind and will.

Nor can one see, except as others would.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/67b.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

July 26: Kathleen Charlotte Angel Passed Away

July 27: Twenty-Eight3

July 28: Sixty-Seven2

Twenty-Eight3

July 27, 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 using a garden to symbolize an early childhood classroom.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Twenty-eight enjoys a busy morning

Working unabated in her garden.

Each tiny plant is years away from bloom,

Needing now the gift of ample room

To grow before the ground begins to harden.

Yet there is much to savor in this dawning.

Each year the winter whistles its chill warning,

Inviting her to lay aside her burden,

Glimpse unsought of universal doom.

However, she knows well her inner guerdon:

The passion that each year she will resume.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/28c.html. For more poems about teachers, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/teacherspoems.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

July 27: Twenty-Eight3