Happiness Hangs Loosely on Your Lives

June 7, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A forty-third anniversary poem about the creation and maintenance of happiness:

Happiness hangs loosely on your lives,

A garment that you wear with fortune's blessing.

Praised be both the wisdom and the will

Pressed between the pages of your days,

Years and years of choices amid chances.

For now, this day, the rhapsody revives

Old memories of love beyond expressing,

Returned as music, passionate and still,

That turns and turns with wonder as it plays,

Yearning that refuses trite romances.

There is a place in all love that survives --

Home, where nakedness needs no undressing,

In which, with candor and sufficient skill,

Reason turns away its clear-eyed gaze,

Deferring to the heart, which weeps and dances.

© 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/happ47.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

June 1: Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love

June 2: Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

June 3: Forty-Two Years Is like a Song

June 4: The Years Flow Through Our Marriage like a River

June 5: Frequently One Finds a Little Sunshine

June 6: Happiness Comes from Choosing Happiness

June 7: Happiness Hangs Loosely on Your Lives

Happiness Comes from Choosing Happiness

June 6, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A seventeenth anniversary poem about the choice of happiness and love even in the face of adversity:

Happiness comes from choosing happiness,

As love's the consequence of choosing love.

Perhaps one’s angel shall the weaker prove,

Pinned by one whose fortune it must bless.

Yet some must make their choice under duress,

Salvaging the unspent sweetness of

Each moment that across their lives might move,

Vivid in the wake of its caress.

Endurance is no name for an embrace,

Nor is one's joy much kindled by one's fury.

There is but death and illness in the offing;

Eventually, all life ends in pain.

Even so, love touches life with grace,

Not vested in the verdict of the jury,

Transforming what would else have little meaning,

Happily engaged again, again.

© 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/happ35.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

June 1: Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love

June 2: Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

June 3: Forty-Two Years Is like a Song

June 4: The Years Flow Through Our Marriage like a River

June 5: Frequently One Finds a Little Sunshine

June 6: Happiness Comes from Choosing Happiness

Frequently One Finds a Little Sunshine

June 5, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A first anniversary poem about the eternal will to love:

Frequently one finds a little sunshine

In places where the forecast calls for rain,

Restoring one to life and love again,

Suddenly bursting through the broken cloud line.

There is, when one is walking up an incline,

A source of strength no apathy can drain

Nor gradient preclude through pitch or pain,

Nestled in the will beneath one's timeline:

Interior even to one's soul,

Vaster than the panoply of night,

Embedded in the very act of being,

Resident in every thought and word.

Silence is the longing of the whole,

A yearning absolute and infinite,

Revelation of eternal feeling

Yet dancing motionless to songs unheard.

© 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/freque.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

June 1: Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love

June 2: Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

June 3: Forty-Two Years Is like a Song

June 4: The Years Flow Through Our Marriage like a River

June 5: Frequently One Finds a Little Sunshine

The Years Flow Through Our Marriage like a River

June 4, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A twenty-fourth anniversary poem in which a couple pauses to watch time flow by:

The years flow through our marriage like a river

We watch from some steep bank along the way,

Each of us as much in love as ever,

Nor can our words this sense of grace convey.

Time runs on below us as we pause,

Yielding to the wonder of our love,

Fate that seems beyond effect and cause,

Our choices moved by ends we know not of.

Underneath our love is something more,

Refusing time and will, refusing age,

The joy in being that all life is for,

Here within us as we turn the page.

© 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/theye3.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

June 1: Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love

June 2: Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

June 3: Forty-Two Years Is like a Song

June 4: The Years Flow Through Our Marriage like a River

Forty-Two Years Is like a Song

June 3, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A forty-second anniversary poem about the beautiful love song beneath the usual anniversary song:

Forty-two years is like a song

Old and fondly sung,

Relevant to any age,

Trite, but never wrong.

Yet underneath there is a love

Too densely wrought to sing,

Well-tempered in the weight of years,

Of passion made, and spring.

Yes, there it is: a madrigal

Evolved into a life,

A gift amidst one's wandering

Reserved for man and wife,

Sweet song of man and wife.

© 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/42year.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

June 1: Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love

June 2: Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

June 3: Forty-Two Years Is like a Song

Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

June 2, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A fiftieth anniversary poem calling for fifty more years:

Fifty years is really not enough

In which to plumb the depths of someone's soul.

Fifty more years, then, should be the goal:

To know the beauty of another's love,

Yearnings share, and any doubts rebuff.

Yet life was never easy in those years.

Everest is sometimes hard to climb.

A will to love has brought you to this time,

Rich in joys that time cannot remove.

So may this day be filled with happy tears!

© 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/50year.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

June 1: Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love

June 2: Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love

June 1, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A twenty-fifth anniversary poem about love deepening over time:

Twenty-five years, and still you are in love!

What river does not deepen as it flows?

Each day your love increases as it goes,

Nourishing the lands through which it moves.

The love that lasts is deeper far than passion.

Years pass and it abides beneath the light.

Few know the secrets of its dark delight,

Intent on all the toys that are in fashion.

Vivid lusts yield pleasures that soon cease.

Each year of love yields happiness and peace.

© 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/25yea2.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries

June 1: Twenty-Five Years, and Still You Are in Love