Welcome to the Prime of Life

July 31, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is summer.

Today’s poem is about midlife comparing the middle of life to summer.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

WELCOME TO THE PRIME OF LIFE

1

Welcome to the prime of life!

The sun-drenched peak! The mountaintop!

You are the best you’ll ever be.

It’s all downhill from here.

Welcome to the prime of life!

In the maelstrom, on the clock!

Heavily invested

In family and career.

You wonder, whether man or wife,

If there could be more. The lock

Yields to your uncertain key.

What you feel is fear.

2

I’ve had affairs. Oh, yes, I’ve had affairs!

And I’ll have many more. My wife, I’m sure,

Has had some of her own. Who cares?

We are no longer starry-eyed and pure.

Midlife is a time to change,

A time to test and rearrange.

The prisoner rebels:

New partners for new selves!

For every stage of life,

A different man or wife.

I’ve had affairs. Oh, yes, I’ve had affairs!

I know my husband’s had some of his own.

We loved each other once, but now who cares?

Midlife is a time to be reborn.

Midlife crisis,

Youth entices.

While still active,

Still attractive,

One last chance

For romance.

We let our marriage drift until one day

One dalliance too many turned to love.

The wreckage of our lives around us lay.

We wept and raged, at long last deeply moved.

Midlife’s time to recognize

The inner damage done by lies.

It’s time to face the ugly truth

Long hidden by the dreams of youth,

And to change, for only so

Can one transplant oneself and grow.

3

How beautiful to make it through these years,

Shooting through the rapids of our rage,

The doubts, desires, disappointments, tears,

The turmoil that defines this restless age.

How beautiful to look back on our love

And know that it is stronger for these trials!

For passion long imagined puerile proved,

And light-filled lust no longer love beguiles.

Thank God we’re through it, sailing into fall,

The long, hot summer of our lives now over!

The wind is steady at our backs, and all

The widening waters calm, though growing colder.

4

The long, hot, fruitful days of life’s brief summer,

The prime of life passing all too quickly,

With thunderstorms that gather in the heat

And burst across the thirsty, dried-out plains,

Uprooting ancient trees, with swollen rivers

Raging, swirling, flooding, fast receding,

With fierce fires that open up the canopy,

Giving light to seedlings and to change,

With rippling, ripening fields, the winter’s store,

Exploding into heavy-headed grain,

With gardens lush and bountiful, with woods

Alive with life unleashed by lust and love,

Full, fat, feisty, feasting on the sun!

How long the labor lit by lengthened days!

How sweet the nights concealed in fleeting darkness!

The taste of life full, fruity, well-fermented.

The sunsets lingering, shot-through with yearning.

The dawns a bird’s full-throated cry of joy!

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/welco3.html. For more psychological poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/psychologicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer.

July 25: Summer

July 26: It’s Been So Good to Have You as a Friend

July 27: One Late Summer Afternoon

July 28: Elizabeth

July 29: Fruit Abounds Amid the Press of Labor

July 30: Thirty-Two

July 31: Welcome to the Prime of Life

Thirty-Two

July 30, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is summer.

Today’s poem is a number poem comparing a thirty-two year old to a slowly ripening summer field.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Thirty-two's a slowly ripening field,

Hot and happy in the summer sun.

Intense and long, the days are filled with light.

Reason knows that past the blue is night,

That all that ever is will be undone;

Yet for now that letter is still sealed.

Time moves slowly, certain of its yield,

While gentle breezes through the barley run.

Odd wisps of memories float high and white.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/32.html. For more number poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer.

July 25: Summer

July 26: It’s Been So Good to Have You as a Friend

July 27: One Late Summer Afternoon

July 28: Elizabeth

July 29: Fruit Abounds Amid the Press of Labor

July 30: Thirty-Two

Fruit Abounds Amid the Press of Labor

July 29, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is summer.

Today’s poem is a number poem describing a mother in the summer of her life.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Fruit abounds amid the press of labor.

Old, abandoned plants produce sweet plums.

Rivers run unseen through ripening fields.

The heartscape sings, dreams unremembered answer.

Youthful still, the mother waits and listens.

 

There is much in summertime to savor,

Hard though the work until the harvest comes.

Revel, then, in what all seasons yield,

Even as each leaf becomes a dancer,

Even as the white world gleams and glistens.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/fruita.html. For more number poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer.

July 25: Summer

July 26: It’s Been So Good to Have You as a Friend

July 27: One Late Summer Afternoon

July 28: Elizabeth

July 29: Fruit Abounds Amid the Press of Labor

Elizabeth

July 28, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is summer.

Today’s poem is a philosophical name poem about a gardener reaching for the ideal.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Elizabeth spends summer afternoons

Leaning over roses and potatoes,

In radiant concentration as she prunes.

Zeno's thoughts are less with her than Plato's

As she snips and clips in steeply slanted light,

Blessed alike by tulips and tomatoes.

Each creature yearns to be, but never quite

Touches what it is, as dissonant tunes

Hover at the silent edge of night.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/elizab.html. For more philosophical poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer.

July 25: Summer

July 26: It’s Been So Good to Have You as a Friend

July 27: One Late Summer Afternoon

July 28: Elizabeth

One Late Summer Afternoon

July 27, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is summer.

Today’s poem is about the recognition of death waiting behind a late summer afternoon sky.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

One late summer afternoon

As the stars waited patiently

Behind a deep cobalt sky,

I took my usual suburban walk,

Up this hill, down that hill,

Past tiny lawns and tidy gardens,

Till I stopped, and imagined the stars

Behind the sky, waiting,

Then took a deep breath and went on.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/onelat.html. For more poems about death, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/deathpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer.

July 25: Summer

July 26: It’s Been So Good to Have You as a Friend

July 27: One Late Summer Afternoon

It's Been So Good to Have You as a Friend

July 26, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is summer.

Today’s poem is a friendship poem comparing friendship to the light of a summer sun.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

It's been so good to have you as a friend:

As sweet and rich as honey-colored sun

Slanting steep across a summer lawn,

Gilding life with all that love can lend.

And now that you yourself have griefs to tend,

I want to be the strong and caring one

To count to you the lovely things you've done

Until these troubles pass and sorrows end.

You are so beautiful in form and soul

That you bring happiness to all you're near:

Just as a sea rose, flowering in mist,

Makes a paradise of some bleak shoal,

Turning truth to something far more clear,

No pain unsoothed or rain-swept cheek unkissed.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/itsbee.html. For more friendship poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/friendshippoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer.

July 25: Summer

July 26: It’s Been So Good to Have You as aFriend

Summer

July 25, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is summer.

Today’s poem is an acrostic calendar poem describing the slow motion of summer.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Summer slides but slowly to the sea

Underneath a bright blue breathless sky.

Memory meanders into dream,

Making time spill over its thin stream,

Each moment motionless, a golden eye,

Radiant image of eternity.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/summer.html. For more calendar poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Summer.

July 25: Summer