Indeed, from Whom or What Are Rights Derived

July 2, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Independence Day (USA).

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

An Independence Day poem about the true derivation of rights:

Indeed, from whom or what are rights derived?

Need we pin them on some deity,

Dependent for them on some fragile faith?

Even so, we cannot do without them,

Predisposed to fear and rage and greed.

Embrace them, then, however they arrived,

Nature’s scaffold for morality,

Destined to the power of kings replace,

Enduring truths so salient none should doubt them,

Nor more nor less than what the heart decreed.

Crafted, then, by love, to love ascribed,

Each right is more than mere legality,

Dependent on a purely human grace,

As those who love must keep their bliss about them,

Yielding self to a more urgent need.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/indee2.html. For more Independence Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/july4thpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Independence Day (USA)

7/1: Justice Now Means Food, Health, Habitation

7/2: Indeed, from Whom or What Are Rights Derived

Justice Now Means Food, Health, Habitation

July 1, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Independence Day (USA).

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

An Independence Day poem about the way our view of justice has changed:

Justice now means food, health, habitation.

Unequal access means unequal right.

Let us understand that as a nation

Years have changed the foci of our sight.

Freedom once applied to property.

One did with what one owned as one saw fit,

Using land or slave or factory

Ruthlessly, for what it might remit.

Today, one can’t do simply as one would,

Having monetized a common good.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/justi4.html. For more Independence Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/july4thpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Independence Day (USA)

7/1: Justice Now Means Food, Health, Habitation

Flowers Symbolize Unbridled Passion

June 30, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A wedding poem about the symbolic meaning of flowers:

Flowers symbolize unbridled passion,

Love, and the attraction lust requires.

Of beauty born, they burn with fragile fires,

Waiting to be some lover’s prized possession.

Even so may lovers be drawn higher,

Rapture melting soon their self-obsession,

Swept up to tenderness by love's desires.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/flower.html. For more wedding poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Weddings

6/24: A Wedding Is the Entrance to a Marriage

6/25: All My Happiness Goes Out to You

6/26: As I Wait at the Head of the Aisle

6/27: Beauty Is the Radiance of Being

6/28: Because like Roots We Intertwine

6/29: Exactly When Did Love Come to Your Hearts

6/30: Flowers Symbolize Unbridled Passion

Exactly When Did Love Come to Your Hearts

June 29, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A name and wedding poem about how love grows stronger over time:

Exactly when did love come to your hearts,

Vesting something one in something twain,

Exchanging simple wholes for complex parts,

Less purely self, more vulnerable to pain?

Yet passion often migrates into need,

Not needing much to crave unfeigned affection;

And so each craving does the other feed,

Need serving need as bond against rejection.

Doubt not such sweet sense can be sustained,

Not by passion, but by will and grace.

In long-lived love there's too much to be gained,

Convectively, to easy unembrace.

Oceans well up richly well within,

Letting go the air that we begin

Avidly to breathe, with passion burning,

So fraught with love no years can hold our yearning.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/exactl.html. For more wedding poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Weddings

6/24: A Wedding Is the Entrance to a Marriage

6/25: All My Happiness Goes Out to You

6/26: As I Wait at the Head of the Aisle

6/27: Beauty Is the Radiance of Being

6/28: Because like Roots We Intertwine

6/29: Exactly When Did Love Come to Your Hearts

Because like Roots We Intertwine

June 28, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A wedding poem in which the best man is the groom’s brother and the maid of honor is the bride’s sister:

BEST MAN

Because like roots we intertwine,

Planted in a single place,

Your happiness is also mine,

Deep as love's first twisting sign

In that most labyrinthine space.

Because like roots we intertwine

And each for each the world designed,

Wrestling towards a common grace,

Your happiness is also mine

Though shared in ways we can't define,

Too close to touch, too vast to trace.

Because like roots we intertwine,

Obliterating every line

That might divide our long embrace,

Your happiness is also mine

As you with nuptial vows combine,

And with your loved one lines erase.

Like roots, your lives will intertwine.

Then let your happiness be mine!

MAID OF HONOR

Because like roots we intertwine,

Living in a long embrace,

Your happiness is also mine,

Spilling over, just as wine

Must flood the heart's too narrow space.

Because like roots we intertwine

And each for each must life define

In ways too myriad to trace,

Your happiness is also mine,

A joy that knows no boundary line,

Nor limit to its golden grace.

Because like roots we intertwine

And over years did love refine,

Planted in our single place,

Your happiness is also mine

As you with nuptial vows combine,

And with your loved one lines erase.

Like roots, your lives will intertwine.

Then let your happiness be mine!

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/becaus.html. For more wedding poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Weddings

6/24: A Wedding Is the Entrance to a Marriage

6/25: All My Happiness Goes Out to You

6/26: As I Wait at the Head of the Aisle

6/27: Beauty Is the Radiance of Being

6/28: Because like Roots We Intertwine

Beauty Is the Radiance of Being

June 27, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A name and wedding poem about the beauty of love:

Beauty is the radiance of Being,

Opening a seam of inner sky.

Now we pause a moment beyond seeing,

Not at the heart of things but quite nearby,

In fields where all our deepest longings lie.

Each of us becomes more beautiful

As we are touched by love's angelic grace.

Now life seems more blessed and bountiful,

Delighting in the gift of an embrace,

Meaning more than meaning's eye can trace.

As one can be unfazed or filled with music,

Rejoicing in the glory of a song,

Kind hearts can have more Being if they choose it,

United in a gentle love and strong,

So sweet they dwell in beauty all life long.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/beauty.html. For more wedding poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Weddings

6/24: A Wedding Is the Entrance to a Marriage

6/25: All My Happiness Goes Out to You

6/26: As I Wait at the Head of the Aisle

6/27: Beauty Is the Radiance of Being

As I Wait at the Head of the Aisle

June 26, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A wedding poem from the bride to her mother:

As I wait at the head of the aisle

On Dad's arm, about to be wed,

I remember the light of your smile

In the days when I still was a child,

And you kissed me goodnight in my bed.

And I think, as I wait by the aisle,

Of an innocent world without guile,

An Eden where goodness is bred:

Lit by the light of your smile,

A place where one tarries awhile,

Sheltered from sorrow and dread.

I wait by the head of the aisle

With a gift that no years can defile,

A beauty no winter can shed.

And I walk in the light of your smile

To a life that was mine all the while,

And a love that is just as you said:

A love that waits down the aisle

For the warmth and the light of my smile.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/asiwai.html. For more wedding poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Weddings

6/24: A Wedding Is the Entrance to a Marriage

6/25: All My Happiness Goes Out to You

6/26: As I Wait at the Head of the Aisle