Moses Never Reached the Promised Land

January 15, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday about never reaching the promised land.

You can hear me read the poem and listen to the music for it at my site by going to http://www.poemsforfree/week.html.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Moses never reached the promised land,
And I, too, died upon that distant mountain,
Resting on the laurels of my dream.
There is no end to struggle, no safe refuge
In which one can say, yes, I have arrived,
No longer feel the guilt of privilege,
Let go the fierce anxiety for justice,
Untie the knots of conscience in one’s soul.
The promised land’s a vision, not a place,
Held within the unrelenting heart.
Each generation must behold its beauty,
Reach for its uncompromising goodness,
Know that its long looked-for realization
Is in a time zone one will never see.
No matter. There’s a joy in going forward
Greater than the joy of going home.

© by Nicholas Gordon