Weekly Poems from Poems for Free: A Washington's Birthday Poem and More
Posted: Wednesday, February 17, 2010
by Nicholas Gordon
http://www.poemsforfree.com
GREAT ENDS DEMAND GREAT SACRIFICE
Great ends demand great sacrifice,
Else the dream becomes a debt.
Open hearts will pay the price,
Redeeming loss without regret.
Great leaders also make demands,
Else the mandate turns to dust.
Willing minds find willing hands,
As courage shared engenders trust.
So a nation moves ahead,
Having found its avatar,
In hard times hungry to be led,
Navigating by its star.
Great followers must take great care
To choose a leader who will be
Out of love and duty there,
Not shy, but still reluctantly.
Heaven has no exit to despair.
A faith too pure's a prison in disguise.
Passion is the impetus for prayer,
Pleading for more hope than meets the eyes.
Yet lack of faith can, too, be too complete,
Emancipating one from all that matters,
A separate, though quite equal, self-deceit,
Sustained by reason, that one's flailing flatters.
Truth demands fidelity to pain,
Ecstasy that comes and goes again,
Revealing nothing but a faith in tatters.
BEFORE YOU, I WAS JUST HANGING OUT
Before you, I was just hanging out.
My days were all hubbub, no beauty.
Boredom seemed what life was all about.
Excitement meant going to a movie.
Then I fell in love with you; my mall
Opened to a sudden rush of sky;
Trees turned into happiness; and all
The things I had forgotten made me cry.
The loves that fasten one to life grew strong:
You, the thought of seeing you, your touch,
My love for those I'd loved my whole life long,
Knowing, but not feeling it too much.
You brought my life to life, my love to flower;
Now love me well, and through me taste your power.
PASS OVER ME, DEAR LORD, PLEASE PASS ME BY
Pass over me, dear Lord, please pass me by.
Attend not to the fortune of my fate.
Spare me not, nor crush me. Let me be
Servant only to my willing heart.
Open not your gates, nor oceans part.
Vest not laws and covenants in me.
Each soul must choose the valor of its state:
Return to myth that I might truly die.
BEHOLD THE MOTHER WITH HER NEWBORN CHILD
Behold the mother with her newborn child!
An icon of a hope that never dies.
Death may label all we cherish lies,
Yet this love lies too deep to be defiled.
We clear an inner field where fate has smiled,
Letting play the pleasures of surmise,
Holding back all contrary replies,
As though our thoughts might turn the winters mild.
Despite the well-known travesties of time,
Each time a child is born we dream anew,
For only thus our losses are regained.
Though we must share the destiny of slime,
No passion in our palette is more true
Than that which cradles innocence unstained.
DO BELIEVE I'LL NEVER LEAVE YOU
Do believe I'll never leave you:
Always I'll be in your heart.
Don't forget my soul is near you:
Death might take my presence from you,
Yet we'll never be apart.
FELICIA
Felicia has a winter in her spring.
Each day the frost within her meets the sun.
Loving isn't easy when a child
Is tended by a rabid dog gone wild.
Closeness means the torture has begun.
Icy though her heart, it yet will sing
As slowly tears just melted through her run.
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