Poem of the Week

July 19, 2012 #694

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Ramadan.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Religion must touch more than mind and heart.
A living faith must be a way of life.
Mundane tasks done righteously are prayer,
As outer harmony heals inner strife.
Devotion must not be a thing apart,
Applied when turned towards Mecca. Everywhere
Needs passionate delight and humble care.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Poem of the Week

July 12, 2012 #693

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Bastille Day.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Before the terror comes the tyranny.
A bloodstained flower has roots in bloodstained soil.
Some would steal the fruit of others' toil,
Then claim it as a right of property.
In revolutions, though, if chaos reigns,
Legitimacy is lost, and many will
Look back with less distaste at former ill,
Eager more for order than for gains.
Days of terror yield dictators new,
As the many yield power to the few,
Yearning for the clarity of chains.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Poem of the Week

July 5, 2012 #692

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is an anniversary poem.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

For you there is no more enduring passion
Or salient presence in your inner rooms,
Realizing the hopes of brides and grooms,
The deepest bonds that separate souls can fashion.
Years accumulate, the leaves turn ashen,
Forests stand naked as the winter looms.
On frigid mornings, on golden afternoons,
Underneath the roots love finds its ration.
Ravenous once, you now have long been sated,
Yearning still, but from a place called home,
Embracing what you have as what you are.
A choice was made, of course, but now seems fated,
Rendered as a fable writ in stone,
Signaled at your birth by some bright star.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Poem of the Week

June 28, 2012 #691

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Independence Day (USA).

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

In every heart there is, of course, corruption.
No one is immune from lust and greed.
Democracy accommodates this need,
Embracing what might else lead to destruction.
People cannot people an ideal.
Equality's a myth, has always been
No more than something to put favors in,
Dependent on the lie that it is real.
Each decision is a battlefield,
Not of ideas but interests, yours and mine,
Calculated shrewdly to define
Exactly what advantage each might yield.
Do not be discouraged: Evil is
As much a part of us as love or bliss.
Yet what is not a wound cannot be healed.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Poem of the Week

June 21, 2012 #690

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Summer.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Summer shimmers in the sizzling sun,
Unbearable until one finds some shade.
Mere movement breaks a sweat, as one would trade
More daylight for less heat. Day is done
Eventually, and night comes naked, yearning,
Ravenous, its wet black body burning.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Poem of the Week

June 14, 2012 #689

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Father's Day.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Forget your former self! It is long gone!
A father grows into a different person.
There is a love that lends your life its longing,
Having felt the beauty of belonging,
Embracing what would else have seemed to worsen,
Rejoicing in what else one might find daunting,
Singing as the harness is put on.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Poem of the Week

June 7, 2012 #687

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a wedding poem.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

No marriage is an island unto itself.
It is a piece of a mainland – of a family, of friends, of a community, of history.

Couples tend their gardens, but the water of life comes from elsewhere.
However great their efforts and their love, they cannot thrive alone.

Of each person, the boundaries are uncertain.
Lines are drawn on surfaces, but underneath roots tunnel where they will.
A marriage is but the most intimate intertwining.
So many others – even strangers – burrow into us for sustenance, or give us, unknowing, their nutrients underground.

A great love does not shine on only one small patch of ground,
Nor does love between husband and wife light only the space between the walls of their marriage.
Do not doubt that love felt in the privacy of one's heart will someday lend a bit of beauty to someone else's night.

Early in the history of Earth, the air was poisonous, and the land was sand and naked stone.
Later, living things sweetened the air and clothed the land and made it fertile.
Love also must be replenished daily, like soil, like air.
Each bit of love we feel helps all of us to breathe, enables all of us to grow.
No more than one tree can survive alone in a desert, can one marriage survive without others' love.

© by Nicholas Gordon