Happiness Hangs Loosely on Your Lives

Music: Luke Dillon By Turlough O'Carolan. Sequenced by Barry Taylor at Turlough O'Carolan.

Hear me read the poem as an MP3 file. Alpha List Anniversary Poems About This Site Poems for Free Copyright by Nicholas Gordon

Happiness hangs loosely on your lives, A garment that you wear with fortune's blessing. Praised be both the wisdom and the will Pressed between the pages of your days, Years and years of choices amid chances. For now, this day, the rhapsody revives Old memories of love beyond expressing, Returned as music, passionate and still, That turns and turns with wonder as it plays, Yearning that refuses trite romances. There is a place in all love that survives -- Home, where nakedness needs no undressing, In which, with candor and sufficient skill, Reason turns away its clear-eyed gaze, Deferring to the heart, which weeps and dances.