How Can I Say What Is Too Much for Words

April 30, 2021

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 about how each might know how the other’s love feels:

How can I say what is too much for words?
A rainbow cannot fit into my heart.
Perhaps we should be musical as birds
Perched singing of our love with practiced art.
You cannot taste my happiness, or feel
A little of the chill of your caress.
No word or metaphor can make it real,
Nor song contain the truth I would express.
In my love there are mountains miles high,
Valleys rainbow carpeted, and wide
Enough for clear, still lakes to steal the sky ...
R-R-R-R!!! I cannot tell you what's inside!
So you must turn to what you feel for me,
And read therein my tender rhapsody.
Reach deep, my love, and I will be there, too:
You have me in your heart, as I have you.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/howca2.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries.
April 26: Here There Are No Platitudes to Share
April 27: Home Must Be a Daily Re-Creation
April 28: How Beautiful the Blandishments of Spring
April 29: How Beautiful the Light upon the Water
April 30: How Can I Say What Is Too Much for Words

How Beautiful the Light upon the Water

April 29, 2021

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 4th anniversary poem about the inexpressible beauty of every moment:

How beautiful the light upon the water!
A momentary dance across the heart:
Past all wit, all will, all words, all wonder;
Past hope, past dream, past truth too deep to chart.
Yes, there is much that cannot be forsaken,
For it is far too lovely to conceive,
Of which no single part can be partaken
Unless one would with weft alone worlds weave.
Remember, then, this joy beyond all feeling,
Touched by tears more grateful than revealing,
However shaped by ritual or art.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/howbe2.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries.
April 26: Here There Are No Platitudes to Share
April 27: Home Must Be a Daily Re-Creation
April 28: How Beautiful the Blandishments of Spring
April 29: How Beautiful the Light upon the Water

How Beautiful the Blandishments of Spring

April 28, 2021

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 3rd anniversary poem about the difficulty in the first few years of adjusting to marriage:

How beautiful the blandishments of spring!
Arrays of passion blooming in the aisles,
Pleasure surfeited with loving lust!
Pain then follows, Eden come undone,
Yielding to what love could not foresee.

Time, yes, time will soon its sweet balm bring.
Hurt rejects; commitment reconciles.
In love, the gilt-edged currency is trust,
Redeeming what has many years to run,
Delivering what looks like destiny.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/howbe3.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries.
April 26: Here There Are No Platitudes to Share
April 27: Home Must Be a Daily Re-Creation
April 28: How Beautiful the Blandishments of Spring

Home Must Be a Daily Re-Creation

April 27, 2021

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 about the interplay between physical homes and love:

Home must be a daily re-creation
As two make whole a space not wholly theirs.
Places are part passion, part sensation,
Pending love to place the charms and chairs.
Yearning can appropriate the earth,
Annexing stone to self and eye to sea;
Nor can the wind bring wandering souls to birth,
Needing love to wake their will-to-be.
In shared dominion domicile sits,
Vestal fires lighting hearth and heart,
Equal reigns derived from equal writs,
Restorations none can tell apart.
So must home be both gift and cherished choice,
An outer bulwark and an inner voice,
Requiring love to work its wonders well,
Yet well worth loving for both pith and shell.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Anniversaries.
April 26: Here There Are No Platitudes to Share
April 27: Home Must Be a Daily Re-Creation

Here There Are No Platitudes to Share

April 26, 2021

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 35th anniversary poem about a depth of feeling well beyond words:

Here there are no platitudes to share;
After all these years, no words to measure.
Perhaps such love is more than one can bear;
Perhaps one's joy lies far beyond one's pleasure.
Yet words are merely sluices to the flood
That wells well inland from the graceful wall
Holding in its smile a truth that would
Inundate the bare brown fields of fall.
Remember, then, the beauty that will grow
Till time lets down the curtain of its longing;
Years are fast, but happiness is slow,
For there is no replacement for belonging.
In love there is an ease not easily won,
Freedom from a freedom too undone,
Tears no tears can drain or words can tell,
Held in a heart that knows its passions well.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/heret4.html. For more anniversary poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Anniversaries.
April 26: Here There Are No Platitudes to Share

Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 5

April 25, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Earth Day, which is celebrated on April 22.

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

Part 5 of an Earth Day poem depicting the eventual destruction of the environment and the more environmentally friendly civilization that will follow, inspired by The Fifth World at https://thefifthworld.com/:

Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 5

I dance the dance of the hawk.
I am the hawk, hovering over my prey,
Diving, diving to clutch it in my talons.
I am my prey, struggling to break free,
Knowing the terrible fate that awaits me,
The frightening fall when those talons let go,
The painful shock when I hit the rocks below,
The sharp beak shredding my dead body,
The delicious taste of my meat in the hawk's hungry craw.
And I will hunt and be the prey of others,
Dancing, dancing, in a dance that for this moment
Is completely all that I am.

I ride the wind over a narrow canyon.
A slender radioactive river twists painfully towards the sea.
Below me the canopy stretches from coast to coast,
From pole to pole, green islands in a swollen ocean.
The poisons still seep out of their decaying containers.
The Earth swallows them, embraces them, cooling, cooling,
Healing, healing for the next hundred million years.

At night, above us, the stars once again tell their stories,
Once again guide us on our journeys, reveal their beauty.
Once again our spirits sing in harmony with those around us.
Life itself is music, is dance, is grace, is a thing of beauty,
As it once was, as it is again, as it will remain forever.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/winds5.html. For more poems for Earth Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/earthdaypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Earth Day.
April 19: One Wishes Earth Were Not So Decimated
April 20: Endless Earths
April 21: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 1
April 22: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 2
April 23: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 3
April 24: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 4
April 25: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 5

Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 4

April 24, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Earth Day, which is celebrated on April 22.

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

Part 4 of an Earth Day poem depicting the eventual destruction of the environment and the more environmentally friendly civilization that will follow, inspired by The Fifth World at https://thefifthworld.com/:

Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 4

Then came a long convalescence, which many did not survive.
Seas stayed put, animals and plants emerged furtively,
Humankind bowed its collective head and vowed its collective vow:

Never again.

Never again to isolate their hearts.
Never again to use other humans,
To use other animals,
To use plants,
To modify the Earth.

Never again to hunt or gather without gratitude,
To breathe without awe,
To live without sacrifice,
To love without humility.

Never again.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/winds4.html. For more poems for Earth Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/earthdaypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Earth Day.
April 19: One Wishes Earth Were Not So Decimated
April 20: Endless Earths
April 21: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 1
April 22: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 2
April 23: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 3
April 24: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 4