
There are over 1500 poems at Poems for Free, many written for special occasions, which you are free to use for any personal or non-commercial purpose. Please also feel free to modify them (such as changing names, hair or eye color, sex or number) to suit your needs.
All poems: copyright by Nicholas Gordon.
Darkness comes late afternoon
And winter lies ahead,
But friendship is a glowing fire
When all seems cold and dead.
Just as in some vacant barn,
Unnoticed in the night,
The whole of human history turns,
So we, too, make things right.
We must keep alive the flame
Though darkness grip the Earth;
For in the love we find in friends
Is our chance for rebirth.
Why must we wait till early Christmas morn
To open up our brand-new games and toys?
Why gifts for us the day that Christ was born
If we're good girls and boys?
Now listen to your Christmas tree: I'm wise
In all the ways of faith that you must know.
I'm here because of what I symbolize:
Green through ice and snow.
There is a world beyond what we can see
Where, by grace of God, we can receive
God's greatest gift: to live eternally,
If only we believe.
Eternal life is what God gave to you
In sending down His son to live on Earth.
This was His gift, so Santa brings gifts, too,
To celebrate Christ's birth.
The baby Jesus got gifts on this day
Because, like any child, He loved to play.
And so God wants to share this special joy
With every girl and boy.
Believe God loves you as your parents do,
And takes great joy in giving gifts to you.
Live well and love, and evergreen like me,
You'll live eternally.
My love for you is like the Christmas season:
Joyful, yet with knowledge of the end.
My need for you has neither hope nor reason:
If not a lover, please, just be a friend.
Please, just be a friend, and come to me
When all the world is bright with love and song.
You are my pillar and my fantasy,
My earth and yet the sky for which I long.
My need for you, of course, is mine, not yours,
Nor need you answer me but out of love.
This is the season when we open doors
To let in those whose need our hearts might move.
And after Christmas you may go your way
To leave me with my sadness and my dreams.
I have no right to bother you to stay,
Knowing how your heart, unaltered, leans.
I want you to be here with me for Christmas,
Even if you leave your heart at home.
What you decide, and why, is not my business,
But still for me it's hard to be alone.
And in the East we saw a star
Exceptionally bright,
And wondered what was going on
That ordinary night;
If God were walking in our midst,
Saying what He said,
And we were not His followers,
But trod where He would tread;
And we were witness to His word
And looked Him in the eye,
And found His message interesting
But too bizarre to buy;
If we were in Jerusalem
And watched Him bear the cross,
And suffered with His suffering
But feared to share His loss;
And saw Him die in agony,
And wondered at it all,
And this were something we ourselves,
Not printed books, recall:
What would be the difference,
Had we known Him that way,
Between the faith we feared to feel
And what we fear today?