What Might Make a Person Want to Lead

February 23, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week, in honor of President’s Day, is politics.

Today’s poem is a political poem about the ambition to lead a nation.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

What might make a person want to lead,

To bear the brutal burden of a state?

Power is for some a noble need

That only shaping history can sate.

One wishes to do good, but on what scale?

The wounded world lies heavy on one’s heart.

One’s gaudiest ambitions tend to pale

Upon the stage on which one plays one’s part.

So there are just a few who would ascend

To where one’s choices change the way things are,

And over many years to one’s will bend

The iron bolts that one’s bright visions bar.

And yet such power corrupts, unless one sees

The need to search one’s soul upon on one’s knees.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/whatmi.html. For more poems about politics, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/politicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Politics

February 20: Praised Be Those Who Would Distribute Power

February 21: What Promises They Make and Cannot Keep

February 22: George

February 23: What Might Make a Person Want to Lead