Monday, November 24, 2025

Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

 


A Thanksgiving poem thanking God for the gift of understanding how little we can understand:

 

Thank you for the gift of understanding
How little one can hope to understand.
A universe is all we have at hand,
Nothing too confusing or demanding.
Knowledge is like spindrift on the sea
Sitting on the surface of a wave.
Granted one can know how things behave,
Ill-formed to know how they might come to be.
Vast Your Being, beyond imagination!
Immeasurable, of neither shape nor size.
Nor ought one lose one's sense of adoration,
Gift equal to the gifts of mind and eyes.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Allemande. By Wahneta Meixsell. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/than47.html. For more Thanksgiving poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/thanksgivingpoems.html .





Monday, November 17, 2025

From Teachers, There Is Much That One Can Learn


 


A poem about the teaching profession:

 

From teachers, there is much that one can learn.
One ought not judge their worth by what they earn.
Rather, it's the task one should judge by:
To teach not only what, but how and why,
Yielding goods no teacher's pay could buy.

Even though teaching's a profession,
In fact, it is for many a vocation,
Given the knowledge and the expertise,
Having earned the requisite degrees
To touch the soul of each new generation.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: White River. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/fromte.html. For more poems about professions, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/professionspoems.html .


 

Monday, November 10, 2025

Voices of the Dead Are All Around Me

 


A Veterans Day poem about the psychological difficulty of returning to civilian life:

 

Voices of the dead are all around me.
Everyone alive seems much less real.
The smoke and screams and bombs and blood surround me,
Enduring through the love I still can't feel.
Reality is rarely in the present
As truth and falsehood are defined by pain.
Nor can I stand one moment that is pleasant.
Sanity to me just seems insane.
Death is more attractive than a wife,
And loneliness a far less lonely life.
Yet I must turn and somehow live again.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: End of Time. By Ugonna Onyekwe. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/voice2.html. For more Veterans Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/veteransdaypoems.html .




Monday, November 3, 2025

November Knows the Beauty of a Line

 



A calendar poem for November:

 

November knows the beauty of a line:
One stroke across the heart of a gray sky.
Vacancy is where true vision lies,
Eternity redacted into time.
Memory now moves into the garden,
Bringing with it music never heard.
Each slender, naked branch is like a word
Recalling the lost happiness of Eden.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Elegy. By Wayne Jones. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/novemb.html. For more calendar poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .