Although Our Love Is Over, It Remains

February 9, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Valentine’s Day, which is celebrated on February 14.

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

A Valentine’s Day poem to a former lover:

Although our love is over, it remains
An unfrequented garden in my heart,
Its beauty quite inseparable from pain,
A wilderness where once was willful art.

I hope a little piece of you is still
Reserved for me, a place you may not go,
But where my room, untenanted, can fill
A moment with my music, sweet and slow.

There are no wishes like a former lover's
That from the dark, repentant night must shine.
And so though we have both moved on to others,
I send you from afar this Valentine.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/altho3.html. For more Valentine’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/valentinesdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Valentine’s Day.
February 8: Hunger Is an Organ Tone
February 9: Although Our Love Is Over, It Remains

Hunger Is an Organ Tone

February 8, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Valentine’s Day, which is celebrated on February 14.

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

A Valentine’s Day poem about the ubiquity of longing:

Hunger is an organ tone,
A single note sustained
Perhaps until one is before
Paradise arraigned.
Yearning doesn't end with love,
Vintner of despair.
All the love one can conceive
Leaves some longing there.
Even in one's lover's arms,
Needing nothing more,
There's a void within the heart
Increasing loss with store.
Nor can one love but feel that pang,
Empty at its core.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/hunger.html. For more Valentine’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/valentinesdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Valentine’s Day.
February 8: Hunger Is an Organ Tone

Lust for the One You Love

February 7, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A love poem about how love can enrich the pleasures of lust:

Lust for one you love
Is like a garden flower
That must be pruned and weeded
Before it yields its treasure.

Years refine its grace,
But only with devotion
And much imagination
To freshen the familiar.

But, ah! what then the freedom
That comes alone from giving
And knowing that your wishes
Will be your lover's pleasure!

For in the utmost chamber
Lust is quickly sated
While love still brings redemption,
Ever life's sole savior.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lustfo.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Love.
February 1: A Love Duet for Contrary Voices
February 2: Dreams Do Come True
February 3: Fools Desire Flesh; the Wise Love Souls
February 4: Love Comes Unexpectedly
February 5: Love Is Not a Simple Yes or No
February 6: Love Redeems the Passions of the Moment
February 7: Lust for the One You Love

Love Redeems the Passions of the Moment

February 6, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A philosophical love poem about the fundamental attraction that underlies all being:

Love redeems the passions of the moment
Underneath the qualms that quell the sea.
All the queries that have room to comment
Know quite well how good it is to be!
Love allows the rivers to run freely,
The tides to turn without the least regret,
The mountains to give way to time, sincerely
Pleased with what the eons will forget.
Love turns every moment to forever,
And every thing to unintended song,
And makes a worship out of all endeavor,
And through its suffering, denounces wrong.
Bear witness, then, to love, that you might bear
To be, with neither purpose nor despair.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovere.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Love.
February 1: A Love Duet for Contrary Voices
February 2: Dreams Do Come True
February 3: Fools Desire Flesh; the Wise Love Souls
February 4: Love Comes Unexpectedly
February 5: Love Is Not a Simple Yes or No
February 6: Love Redeems the Passions of the Moment

Love Is Not a Simple Yes or No

February 5, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A love poem about how to identify true love:

Love is not a simple yes or no.
Only will and time ordain its truth.
Visions of sweet pleasure come and go.
Embracing love takes wisdom more than proof.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovei4.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Love.
February 1: A Love Duet for Contrary Voices
February 2: Dreams Do Come True
February 3: Fools Desire Flesh; the Wise Love Souls
February 4: Love Comes Unexpectedly
February 5: Love Is Not a Simple Yes or No

Love Comes Unexpectedly

February 4, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A love poem about the depth of spiritual experience that can be had through love:

Love comes unexpectedly,
An arrow to the heart,
But stays only reluctantly
Through patience, will, and art.

The full-length version of the story
Has both joy and pain,
Boredom, lust, betrayal, glory,
Anger, comfort, shame.

It ends in grief, inevitably,
Through death or separation,
The harshness of the agony
As strong as the relation.

So why, then, love? And why persist
In love long after passion
Has gone its way? And why resist
An urge one need not ration?

The answer is in something more
Than fantasy and pleasure --
A passion passion never saw,
A hunger beyond measure;

A longing for the One in one
One longs for all one's life,
And is love, yes, the same that binds
A husband to a wife.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovec3.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Love.
February 1: A Love Duet for Contrary Voices
February 2: Dreams Do Come True
February 3: Fools Desire Flesh; the Wise Love Souls
February 4: Love Comes Unexpectedly

Fools Desire Flesh; the Wise Love Souls

February 3, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A philosophical love poem about the wisdom of choosing love over lust:

Fools desire flesh; the wise love souls.
Friendship, kindness, generosity,
Humor, wit, a harbor free of shoals --
These bring far more joy than ecstasy.
Yet there are those who, bored by harmony,
Prefer an edgy dissonance that holds
The prospect of a life near duty free,
Adventure unconstrained as time unfolds.
There is, of course, no choice without its cost.
One must be this or that or in between.
And what one isn't stays within the heart.
Wisdom lies in knowing what is lost.
The self's less self less selfless, and more mean,
While loving is a rich yet ruthless art.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/foolsd.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Love.
February 1: A Love Duet for Contrary Voices
February 2: Dreams Do Come True
February 3: Fools Desire Flesh; the Wise Love Souls