Happiness Wears Ordinary Clothes

November 21, 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-eighth anniversary poem about a couple’s need to celebrate their love:

Happiness wears ordinary clothes,
Appropriate for everyday pursuits:
Perhaps because desire comes and goes;
Perhaps because one gets mud on one's boots.
Yet one must celebrate from time to time
The happiness of ordinary days,
Whittling the wonder into rhyme,
Embracing one's prosaic life with praise.
Now let us sing the words that we would speak,
Then dance to steps through which we merely move!
Years look for the passions of a peak,
Expecting some bright blossoming of love.
If happiness must be a stable state,
Given that it must so long endure,
Here we have a day to celebrate
The choices and the chances of our fate,
Having found a grace we can secure.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/happ98.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries
November 16: How Can I Tell You More than I Can Know
November 17: Have an Angel Assigned to Your Account
November 18: Happy Thirteenth Anniversary
November 19: Have Another Look at What You’ve Done
November 20: Heaven Runs a Pretty Good Hotel
November 21: Happiness Wears Ordinary Clothes

Heaven Runs a Pretty Good Hotel

November 20, 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 sixteenth anniversary poem about how beautifully Heaven has designed the hotel of marriage:

Heaven runs a pretty good hotel.
All is well arranged for happiness,
Placed just so, to heighten tenderness,
Placed to spirits heal and sorrows quell.
Yet some against such hostelry rebel,
So pitched on pain they see it as success,
Invested in the cause of their distress,
Xerophytes, who would in deserts dwell.
The choice is there before you every day:
Enduring love or unenduring pleasure,
Exiting the garden of your grace.
Nor is there any reason not to stay,
There being at this inn the things you treasure,
Here, where Heaven runs a pretty good place.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/heave9.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Anniversaries
November 16: How Can I Tell You More than I Can Know
November 17: Have an Angel Assigned to Your Account
November 18: Happy Thirteenth Anniversary
November 19: Have Another Look at What You’ve Done
November 20: Heaven Runs a Pretty Good Hotel

Have Another Look at What You've Done

November 19, 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 fourteenth anniversary poem about love as the antidote for the toxins of life:

Have another look at what you've done
And then rejoice at all the good you see,
Pleased with how you've whittled what might be,
Pleased with seeds you've planted one by one!
Yet there are many toxins still to come
Floating on the tides unnaturally
Out of greed or ignorance as we
Unravel mysteries of rain and sun.
Remember that the antidote is love
That one administers in every act,
Embracing life and beauty and each other.
Each act of love one poisoned drop removes,
Now by example, eloquence, or fact,
To heal some grace that else we might have lacked,
Here for all who would such gifts recover.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/havea6.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries
November 16: How Can I Tell You More than I Can Know
November 17: Have an Angel Assigned to Your Account
November 18: Happy Thirteenth Anniversary
November 19: Have Another Look at What You’ve Done

Happy Thirteenth Anniversary

November 18, 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 thirteenth anniversary poem about why thirteen is actually a lucky number:

Happy thirteenth anniversary!
All our love to you this lucky day!
Pleased to say it in this musical way!
Pleased to spell it out for all to see!
Yet there are many fools who don't agree
That thirteen can be lucky, and who say,
How can Judas be lucky, who'd betray --
Ill fate! - his Lord, although his choice was free?
Remember, though, that there were twelve apostles.
The thirteenth Supper guest was Christ, not Judas.
Embrace, then, that most holy, sacred number!
Equally lucky to Chinese and Quetzalcoatl!
Nor fear the coming year, nor hope encumber,
To surrender to such superstitious nonsense,
Happily together, come what may!

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/happyt.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries
November 16: How Can I Tell You More than I Can Know
November 17: Have an Angel Assigned to Your Account
November 18: Happy Thirteenth Anniversary

Have an Angel Assigned to Your Account

November 17, 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.

An eleventh anniversary poem imagining a customer-service angel on call:

Have an angel assigned to your account,
A customer-service angel with wide wings,
Pleased to whittle mountains as he sings,
Paring them to hills you can surmount.
You simply dial his number. He appears
Every time you call him from the heart,
Letting love decipher your joint chart,
Embracing the familiars of your fears.
Vest in him your unrecorded dreams;
Entrust to him the hopes you gave up hoping,
Needing capital to keep on coping,
Trying to reach ends bereft of means.
Heaven does look after you, it seems.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/havean.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries
November 16: How Can I Tell You More than I Can Know
November 17: Have an Angel Assigned to Your Account

How Can I Tell You More than I Can Know

November 16, 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.

An anniversary poem from a child to his or her parents:

How can I tell you more than I can know?
All the oceans in me fall away.
Precious thoughts, when wild emotions blow,
Pause fleetingly, but can't prolong their stay.
You are the dual anchors of my life
As inner tides well up and then decrease;
Nor can I see you else but man and wife,
Not two but one, a single source of peace.
I need the love you harbor for each other
Very much as if it were for me:
Each day with both a father and a mother
Rests within, a quiet harmony.
So may your love continue, sweet and strong,
As beautiful as now, your whole lives long.
Remember well my love for both of you:
Your future holds the hopes of more than two.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/howca5.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries
November 16: How Can I Tell You More than I Can Know

Fifty Is a Time of Hope and Healing

November 15, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A number poem for fifty as an age when one begins to think more immediately about death:

Fifty is a time of hope and healing,
In which one reconciles oneself with death,
Feeling grateful for the grace of feeling
The passion that ambition was concealing,
Yielding joy for the gift of every breath.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/50d.html. For more number poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Being Fifty
November 9: For You There Can Be No Regret
November 10: For Those Who Would Make Life a Thing of Beauty
November 11: For You It’s Been a Steep and Sometimes Tortured
November 12: Fifty Is a Moment for Reflection
November 13: Fifty’s Full of Life and Well-Tuned Vigor
November 14: Fifty Can Be Taken Well in Stride
November 15: Fifty Is a Time of Hope and Healing