Only in the Prison of Perfection

July 23, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem about the importance of mutual need if a marriage is to last.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Only in the prison of perfection,

Needing neither love nor company,

Your body quite dissolved in pure perception,

One oversoul as far as mind can see;

Unattached to meaning or desire,

Redolent of heaven's thin, cold air,

Empty of an all-devouring fire

Nor interested in being more than there;

Granted such a state, what need for marriage?

All there is, is with you all the while.

Gifts of love redound to those who forage

Earnestly, with neither greed nor guile.

May you hunger and find surfeit sweet,

Each separately an angel incomplete,

Needing one another's love to know

The greatest bliss vouchsafed to those below.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/onlyin.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing

July 21: Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

July 22: Out of Love Comes All in Life That Matters

July 23: Only in the Prison of Perfection

Out of Love Comes All in Life that Matters

July 22, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem about the enormity of the choice to marry.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Out of love comes all in life that matters;

Nor can one love unless one knows one's need.

Years are walls against which passion shatters,

Opening the way for joys that bleed.

Underneath the choice of who is how,

Requiring one again each day to choose,

Embracing a forever ever now,

Not least because one fears what one might lose.

Given its immensity, the choice

Astounds, as blind or provident as fate;

Given its beauty, one can but rejoice,

Evangelist alight before the gate.

More than how one lives is how one loves,

Ever the terrain through which one moves,

Not shaped by fortune, but the work of will,

Though fortune ride the wind for good or ill.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/outofl.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing

July 21: Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

July 22: Out of Love Comes All in Life That Matters

Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

July 21, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem about how the choice to marry goes beyond reason.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Of love and fortune, happiness and choosing:

No reason is enough for such a choice.

You total up the winning and the losing,

Out of which comes no commanding voice.

Underneath the numbers is the need,

Reckless as a snowflake in the wind,

Eden once again by love decreed,

Nor can mere knowledge such sweet hope rescind.

Gifts of grace are given but to those

Amazed enough to step into the light,

Great with wonder at the life they chose,

Embracing it with unabashed delight.

May you choose again each day to love,

Each the gift that does the other move,

Needing always someone who needs you,

That fortune not for one find joy, but two.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/oflove.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing

July 21: Of Love and Fortune, Happiness and Choosing

On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing2

July 20, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an engagement poem inviting angels to the celebration.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

On your engagement let the angels sing!

Now let them fill the air with voices strong!

Yield, ye gates that shelter Heaven's throng!

Open up, that they might glory bring!

Unleash the mighty organ tones that ring

Right through the rock beneath your joyous song!

Even to this world of right and wrong

Now come angels past all reckoning!

Granted, after celebration due,

Angels tend to slowly disappear,

Going back behind the golden door

Even as you long for their return.

Music, though, remains behind with you.

Each moment that you listen you will hear

Not them, but from your own unwritten score,

The songs of love no innocent could learn.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/onyou4.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 20: On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing

Will You Share Your Life with Me

July 19, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is a poem proposing marriage that emphasizes how much of married life is shared.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Will you share your life with me,

Your passions, hopes, and dreams?

Your happy days, your everydays,

Your days no light redeems?

Will you share your life with me,

Your body and your soul?

Becoming willingly a part

That was a simple whole?

Will you share your life with me,

Your parents, children, friends?

Some long loved, some not yet born,

Some that fortune sends?

Will you share your life with me,

Your love your whole life through?

For if you will, it is my will

To share my life with you.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/willyo.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 19: Will You Share Your Life with Me

What I Want to Ask of You Is This

July 18, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is an acrostic poem proposing marriage by reading the poem vertically down the left side.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

What I want to ask of you is this,

If I can find the nerve to make the leap:

Life scatters dreams across the hills of sleep,

Lest it be too easy to find bliss.

Yet I am aware what I might miss.

Only what we treasure can we keep,

Ultimately sowing what we reap,

Moving us to dare that first brief kiss.

And so I must reveal to you my heart,

Recalling all my courage from its rest,

Ready for whatever word might be.

You are all the object of my quest,

My cynosure, my life, my other part.

Each line of this begins my urgent plea.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/whati.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 18: What I Want to Ask of You Is This

There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound

July 17, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is proposing marriage and getting engaged.

Today’s poem is a marriage proposal poem about the need to choose to limit one’s freedom.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

There is a time when freedom must be bound

By what we freely choose to call our own.

For if not, someday we will have found

That we have made the choice to be alone.

I cannot call my love for you a choice:

I simply made a turn and you were there;

And all I was came singing with one voice

To lift my soul ten feet into the air.

But lightning bolts do not outlast the storm:

The years demand not ecstasy but will.

My love for you must take a different form,

One that lasts a lifetime, deep and still.

And so I make my choice, if you'll agree,

And seek your answer: Will you marry me?

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/there6.html. For more engagement poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/engagementpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Proposing Marriage and Getting Engaged

July 17: There Is a Time When Freedom Must Be Bound