How Can Hope Become a Way of Life

May 21, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since this is a week when many colleges and universities have their graduation ceremonies, the theme for this week is graduation.

Today’s poem is a graduation poem about the wisdom of deferred gratification.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

How can hope become a way of life,

A principle determining one's ends,

Putting what might be before what is,

Postponing pleasure till the sacrifice

Yields the dream--contorted, yes, but real?

Granted, one might choose to live one's life

Removed from all pursuit of distant ends,

Avid for the ecstasy of is,

Desiring neither change nor sacrifice,

Undone by the immediately real.

A moment cannot help but move one’s life

To serve by will or chance enduring ends.

In time one sees will be and was in is,

Opening one's heart to sacrifice,

Needing larger nows to hold what's real.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/howc15.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

May 15: To the Graduate Whose Life I Share

May 16: Graduation Shouldn’t Be Too Easy

May 17: Graduation Ought Not Be an End

May 18: Graduation’s Reason to Rejoice

May 19: Sometimes a Sacrifice or Two Comes Easy

May 20: We Are Upward Bound

May 21: How Can Hope Become a Way of Life