For What Does One Live, but for Goodness and Beauty

 

A number poem about the beauty of a life devoted to art:

 

For what does one live, but for goodness and beauty?

One’s goodness is beauty; one’s beauty is good.

Remember that when what one loves is one’s duty,

To labor brings one all the joy that one would.

Yet this does not always work out as it should.

 

Fear not the days of frustration and sorrow;

Old wounds reopened, new ones unhealed.

Undaunted by pain, you’ll turn back to tomorrow,

Renewed by the love that sustains your ideal.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: White River. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/forwh2.html. For more poems about a variety of professions, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/professionspoems.html .

Seventeen Is Such a Lovely Age

 A number poem about being seventeen:

 

Seventeen is such a lovely age,

Ever on the edge of something new!

Vested in a multitude of plans,

Even as the calendar commands.

No choice has yet been made that one need rue,

Though soon, perhaps too soon, time turns the page.

Even at this sweet rehearsal stage,

Each must reduce the many to the few,

Needing dreams to comb through tangled strands.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Lifting Dreams. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/17d.html. For more number poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

To Love Is to Be Naked to the Wind

 A love poem about a new romance:

 

To love is to be naked to the wind,

Holding hands with someone you can’t know.

Invested in a bond that seems secure,

Resisting what seems graceless and less sure,

Trusting in a gift none can bestow,

You turn to one and leave the rest behind.

 

Nothing is more beautiful or pure,

Innocent, quixotic, gentle, kind.

Nor have you any hint how it will go

Except a will that this romance endure.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Forever Yours. By Wayne Jones. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

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

My Heart Is like a Symphony

 A poem, never sent, from a mother to a child whom she was forced to surrender:

 

My heart is like a symphony
That sings of only pain.
Of all that makes a life worthwhile,
Only you remain.

Only in the thought of you
Safe and cared for well
Can I find happiness within
My self-inflicted hell.

Only in my love for you
Is there sufficient grace
For me to want to live at all
In this forsaken place.

Ah, God! Were life not beautiful
And love not full of light,
I could, perhaps, embrace the rage
Of an embittered night.

But as it is, I cannot help
But hope for what might be:
That though I gave you up, you might
Someday, somehow love me.

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: E Minor Prelude. By Frederic Chopin. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/myhea.html. For more poems to children, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/childrenpoems.html .

Beware of Inequalities Too Wide

 

A Bastille Day poem about the dangers of allowing inequalities between classes to grow too wide:

 

Beware of inequalities too wide

And chasms that cannot be bridged by dreams.

Societies fray first along the seams,

Then rip apart, exposing rot inside.

In chaos hopes for liberty abide;

Life in its Edenic newness gleams;

Longing is more brutal than it seems;

Ecstatic demons 'cross the wastelands glide.

Do, then, recall the day of the Bastille

As one whose burst of glory would reveal

Yearnings that would stain the turning tide.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Bittersweet. By SYBS. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/bewar2.html. For more Bastille Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/bastilledaypoems.html .

Identity Requires Memory

 

A poem for Independence Day (USA) about the importance of knowing one’s nation’s history:

 

Identity requires memory.

No less than people, nations must recall

Days past, lest they wander witlessly,

Erased each moment, guided by the wind,

Pushed by lusts no wisdom can forestall.

Events are facts that one cannot rescind,

Nor can forgetting consequence forego.

Despite one's wish, the past is not behind:

Even now, it works its wayward will,

Nor can we understand what we don't know.

Contain your cavils, then, and snide thoughts still,

Even as we celebrate our story,

Described with all the clarity and skill

A scholar can sustain in heart and mind,

Yielding what for now is history.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Borderless. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/identi.html. For more poems for Independence Day (USA), go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/july4thpoems.html .

 

Everything We Give Was Never Ours

 A poem for Eid al-Adha about what it means to give a gift:

 

Everything we give was never ours.

It was a gift, as was life itself.

Dependent as we are, like fragile flowers,

An unborn soul is seed upon God's shelf.

Let yourself then meditate on this:

A sacrifice can be no sacrifice.

Death leaves one with nothing one might miss.

How can one think one owns what has no price,

As every gift one gives is given thrice.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Pachabelly. By Huma Huma. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/ever14.html. For more Eid al-Adha poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/eidaladhapoems.html .