GERONTOLOGISTS ARE GENERALLY GENTLE

Gerontologists are generally gentle,
Engaged as they are in ending life with grace.
Remember that experience is mental;
Old age is no more destiny than race.
Need can make the needy nasty, querulous,
Testy, tearful, childish, obsessed,
Obstinate and ornery, tempestuous,
Livid, listless, lecherous, depressed.
Open, then, your heart, as well you must,
Giving more than you might now suppose.
In time, may you find tenderness in trust
Singing sweetly underneath life's woes,
The lilt of love that lingers, long and deep,
So beautiful it makes the angels weep.

IT TOOK SOME TIME TO GET THE HANG OF BREATHING

It took some time to get the hang of breathing.
I took your hand and led you to the reef.
So beautiful to handle you again
As when you were a child, or as when
I toweled you when you had hurt your hands.
We hung above the brains, vanilla branches,
Purple membranes laced with spider holes,
Bright yellow fish with philosophic foreheads,
Barracuda motionless as words.
Not often anymore are you my child,
Nor can I give you new life every day.
Yet here, again, I held you in the silence,
And it became too much to be what is.

SUPINE BUT UNYIELDING

Supine but unyielding
She undisposed lay,
Ready for pleasure,
Unready for play.

The point was relentless,
The orgasm long,
The aftermath ugly,
The aftertaste strong.

Driven by need
She opened her pelt,
Too angry and bitter
To open herself.

And so the rage rotates,
And so the world turns:
The love that one risks
Is the love that one earns.

HERE'S TO CHEY AND CORY

Here's to Chey and Cory!
To a long and happy life
In an Eden of their making
As a husband and a wife.

Here's to Chey and Cory!
To the passion and the will
That has brought them here together:
May it long sustain them still!

May they love each other
With a love that binds them fast
To the things in life that matter
And the ecstasies that last.

THERE IS NO BEING AT THE HEART OF BEING

There is no being at the heart of being,
No soul beneath the shifting shards of self,
No way of seeing past the act of seeing,
No faith enough to walk across that gulf.
There is no love more loving than our loving,
No meaning that means more than we can mean,
No proof that we are capable of proving,
No grace that pain and sorrow might redeem.
Nothing is the object of our passion,
The void within the vastness of the void,
The rule no rule can rule nor reason ration,
In which all is created and destroyed.
The sea lies lucid in the morning light;
Yet when we dive, we dive towards perfect night.

HARVESTS DO REQUIRE TIMES OF PLANTING

Harvests do require times of planting:
After months of labor comes the prize.
Peace arrives at evening, passion slanting;
Pleasure, deep and true, is no surprise.
Yet on the way, in moments of affection,
A glance can turn the heart to liquid gold.
No paradise has ever reached perfection,
Nor is love less rich as one grows old.
In love there is infinity and time:
Vast truths are glimpsed just past the ecstasy;
Each moment comes complete with wind and chime,
Reminding us of what it means to be.
Sing, then, of goals that discipline require,
And loves that years of loyalty inspire,
Revealing joys that over time accrue,
Yet are eternal, infinite, and true.

THANK YOU FOR NAMING YOURS AFTER OUR OWN

Thank you for naming yours after our own,
Holding a bit of his being in place.
A name is a mask for a sojourning soul,
Nothingness left with a word for a face,
Knight of the night seeking honor alone.

Your kindness has given his memory a trace
Of the living, that he might by name still be known,
Undoing the darkness that death would make whole.

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.