Fifty-One3

August 23, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a number and psychological poem about the need to embrace multiple selves.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Fifty-one reviews her long-past choices,

Interested in knowing who she is.

Fortune is the child of self in ways

That one can neither understand nor phrase,

Yet must accept in searches such as this.

One is, of course, a choir of many voices,

Not just one, one might condemn or praise,

Embracing all, redemptive and remiss.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/51c.html. For more psychological poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/psychologicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Psychology

August 21: Meredith

August 22: Family Is a Rescue Squad in Waiting

August 23: Fifty-One3

Family Is a Rescue Squad in Waiting

August 22, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a number and psychological poem about the difficulties and rewards of family.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Family is a rescue squad in waiting.

One knows there'll be an answer to one's call.

Rest assured there is sufficient love

To water well the wastelands of us all.

Yet simple truths can sometimes bear restating.

Fear not, then, what fortune might befall,

Or what regrets show no signs of abating.

Understand the long-term love that proves

Resilient through the roughhouse of relating.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Psychology

August 21: Meredith

August 22: Family Is a Rescue Squad in Waiting

Meredith

August 21, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a name and psychological poem about an unfortunately common modern type.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Meredith has never been marooned,

Even though it sometimes feels like that.

Relationships have dwindled to one cat,

Even as her inbox has ballooned.

Deep into the night she crunches numbers,

Intelligent, industrious, alone,

Talking only business on the phone,

Hard at rest but briefly when she slumbers.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Psychology

August 21: Meredith

Twenty-Two Years Later They Were Dead

August 20, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is about two former spouses who never managed to get over their divorce.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Twenty-two years later they were dead

And nothing was resolved, nor would it be.

Life, as is its wont, had gone ahead,

But both of them, though freed, were never free.

Both remarried, loved, fell ill, and died,

Buried separately, with space reserved

For those who mourned them most, the two outside

What once was home but could not be preserved.

What bitterness and blame, forgiveness, rage,

Guilt, shame, fury, impotence, and sorrow

Sloshed against the walls of each's cage,

A storm that never yielded to tomorrow.

How beautiful and sad, the love of youth

That, though it could not last, outlasts the truth.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/22year.html. For more divorce poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/divorcepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Divorce

August 14: We’ll Go On, After You

August 15: Friends Go In and Out of People’s Lives

August 16: Hardly a Day Goes By that I Don’t Think of You

August 17: Jim Has Blue Eyes Flecked with Gold

August 18: Love Undoes Its Heritage Quite Slowly

August 19: There Is No Mountain Higher than the Wall

August 20: Twenty-Two Years Later They Were Dead

There Is No Mountain Higher than the Wall

August 19, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a divorce poem reaching out to a former spouse for friendship.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

There is no mountain higher than the wall

That comes between two people once in love.

But time can tear a mountain down with tears

As former lovers slowly move towards touch.

There is no happiness in hard, cold anger

Twisted like a girder in one's way.

The sun and rain can manage to grow flowers

Across the bleakest crust of lava plain.

So we, too, I hope, can manage friendship

Upon the battlefield of past defeat.

I would not want to lose our years of loving

To moments caught for good in bitter light.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/ther15.html. For more divorce poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/divorcepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Divorce

August 14: We’ll Go On, After You

August 15: Friends Go In and Out of People’s Lives

August 16: Hardly a Day Goes By that I Don’t Think of You

August 17: Jim Has Blue Eyes Flecked with Gold

August 18: Love Undoes Its Heritage Quite Slowly

August 19: There Is No Mountain Higher than the Wall

Love Undoes Its Heritage Quite Slowly

August 18, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a divorce poem about how long it takes to leave past love behind.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Love undoes its heritage quite slowly,

Spinning like a planet through its dust.

Sometimes it feels like hatred, sometimes mourning,

Sometimes pain long paralyzed by rust.

Sometimes shame of past humiliation

Wrings the heart with hands inured to toil,

And once again some drops of unspent fury

Spill upon the dry and barren soil.

Ay, me! When will it end? The seasoned sorrow

Of unforgiven trespasses of old?

No matter new love blossoming! There's somewhere

A place within untenanted and cold.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Divorce

August 14: We’ll Go On, After You

August 15: Friends Go In and Out of People’s Lives

August 16: Hardly a Day Goes By that I Don’t Think of You

August 17: Jim Has Blue Eyes Flecked with Gold

August 18: Love Undoes Its Heritage Quite Slowly

Jim Has Blue Eyes Flecked with Gold

August 17, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is about two divorced people who fall in love.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Jim has blue eyes flecked with gold;

Dark-haired handsome, rock-like good.

Marriage hid him, as it should,

Until his love ran cold.

He lived only down the street.

I was married, so was he.

But when divorces left us free,

We found the chance to meet.

Now we're both far happier

Than either ever was before.

Through suffering we found the door

That opened to each other.

We'll always feel, of course, the pain.

Divorce cannot but make one bleed.

But in that pain there lay a seed

That soon would bloom again.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Divorce

August 14: We’ll Go On, After You

August 15: Friends Go In and Out of People’s Lives

August 16: Hardly a Day Goes By that I Don’t Think of You

August 17: Jim Has Blue Eyes Flecked with Gold