HAPPY FOURTH ANNIVERSARY
Happy fourth anniversary --
A moment to reflect on life and love.
Praised be those who whittle what they see,
Presuming their surroundings to improve.
Yearning needs companionship, and choice
Finds most content when joined, as though in song,
Open to a harmonizing voice,
United in conviction twice as strong.
Rejoice, then, in the fortune of your fate,
The sweet dependence of your chosen state,
Happy in a love where you belong.
YOU ARE THE ROSE ABOUT TO BLOOM
You are the rose about to bloom,
The color soon to wake,
The perfume set to scent the breeze,
The bud about to break.
You stand upon the lip of time
Alight with what will be,
And see yourself out to the sky
Across the open sea.
We see you vertically, a gift
Too beautiful to plumb,
And treasure all the years you were
And all the years to come.
I DON'T KNOW HOW WE GET INTO THESE FIGHTS
I don't know how we get into these fights.
After them I look back at the ashes
More shocked than hurt, as when a light plane crashes,
Slanting numb through strange, unearthly lights.
Oh, how I wish I could get off that plane
Rushing to its rendezvous with tears!
Rage is but a mask for my shy fears.
Yet I would die before I caused you pain.
LABOR IS THE BURDEN OF OUR BEING
Labor is the burden of our being,
A weight that weds us firmly to the earth,
Blessed servitude that serves a common meaning
On which each may erect a sense of worth.
Remember, then, the beauty of a calling
Demanding both integrity and skill:
A dancer in the drifts of early morning,
Yet traveling towards sunset through sheer will.
REMEMBER THE UTILITY OF SHAME
Remember the utility of shame,
On which in part our decency depends.
Such sentiments evolve to serve our ends,
Harrowing the mask behind the name.
How apt that to ourselves we be revealed
As time pauses in between the years,
Season of incantatory tears,
Harrowed for the sins we have concealed.
Allow your shame full access to your heart,
Nor flinch from bearing witness to your part,
As only what is treated can be healed.
HOW MUCH HAS HAPPENED IN SO LITTLE TIME
How much has happened in so little time!
All our wonder withers in the wind.
Praised be love, that turns our days to rhyme,
Psalter to what else had merely been.
Years of love become a dance for two,
Fraught with grace, sustained by skill and art;
In time with time, though quite beyond time through
Forsaking all that would estrange the heart.
Time disappears, for love's an ancient song
Heard forever by the ever young.
A WORKING MOTHER'S ALWAYS AT THE MERCY
A working mother's always at the mercy
Of those she has entrusted with her child.
Her heart berates her frequently but tersely
'Til once again she sees that fortune's smiled.
I'm blessed that I can trust you so completely
With the person who is closest to my heart.
You care for him not only well but sweetly,
Loving him as I when we're apart.
I cannot bear to think what I would do
If I could not be easy in my choice.
I thank the Lord each day that I have you,
And in that fortune silently rejoice.
Thank you for the care and love you give.
Without you I don't know how I would live.
About the Author:
Nicholas Gordon is a poet and the webmaster of the popular poetry site, Poems for Free at http://www.poemsforfree.com. He holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Stanford University. For most of his working life, he taught English at New Jersey City University, in Jersey City, NJ.