Weekly Poems from Poems for Free: A Retirement Poem and More
NO ONE JUGGLED TIME AS WELL AS YOU
No one juggled time as well as you,
Interweaving literature and law,
Nor served as long and well, nor rendered to
Our students so much life as in your store.
Favors were your pleasure; ease, your grace.
Although you did much, much of what you did
Lay unobserved, so leisurely your pace,
Careful to keep agita well hid.
Over forty years you taught of beauty,
No less for love than conscientious duty,
Embracing with a zest your time and place.
TOUGH AND LOVELY
Tough and lovely, to see my child gain
What personality she will assume,
Each bit and gesture worked on year by year,
No stopping till the character is clear.
Tough and lovely, to see the child remain
Yet underneath the mask that is her doom.
Only slowly does the child disappear,
Not needing me to kiss away all pain,
Entering alone the darkened room.
IN MANY WAYS, IT’S AS IF I LAST SAW YOU
In many ways, it’s as if I last saw you
Recently, the image is so clear –
Even your eyes, hidden behind sunglasses on the pier;
Nor does it take much to restore you
Exactly, as if once again you were here.
A WEDDING IS A PARTY
A wedding is a party with,
Of course, a wedding cake.
But sometimes by the time it comes,
It’s hard to stay awake.
People need to talk a lot,
And laugh and joke and kiss,
And cry – why do they cry? – and mention
God and love and bliss.
Two people have decided that
They’ll share one house for life,
And call themselves, instead of friends,
A husband and a wife.
And so we have to get dressed up,
And eat a lot, and wait
For hours till they finally serve
The great big wedding cake.
TO THE FOUNDING FATHERS
Your light still lingers in our distant morning,
A star that we perceive across the void.
We chart our passage by your words, still burning
Long after your bright core has been destroyed.
No longer do we speak of “natural” rights,
Nor can we think that Reason guides our will.
We’ve been through far too many gruesome nights
To hope we have reduced our lust to kill.
Yet hope remains the engine of our fire,
Hope that someday all of us will be
Happy in the least that we require:
Well-fed, well-housed, safe, secure, and free.
This dream we still pursue. Though darkness come,
Your wisdom, hope, and courage through us run.
HAPPINESS COMES FROM CHOOSING HAPPINESS
Happiness comes from choosing happiness,
As love’s the consequence of choosing love.
Perhaps all angels shall the weaker prove,
Pinned by those whose fortunes they must bless.
Yet some must make their choice under duress,
Salvaging the unspent sweetness of
Each moment that across their sea might move,
Vivid in the wake of its caress.
Endurance is no name for an embrace,
Nor is one’s joy much kindled by one’s fury.
There is but death and illness in the offing;
Eventually, all life ends in pain.
Even so, love touches life with grace,
Not vested in the verdict of the jury,
Transforming what would else have little meaning,
Happily engaged again, again.
A CHILD IS THE GREATEST GIFT
A child is the greatest gift
That our lives can bestow.
It brings the most exquisite joy
That we will ever know.
Some days deliver happiness,
Far more than we can touch.
We need the help of all our friends
To comprehend how much.
And so we thank you for the gifts,
Both those you brought and are,
That celebrate this rich, full life
And its rising star!
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.
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