The Point Is What You Have, Not What You Don't

November 21, 2013 #764

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

The point is what you have, not what you don't.
How can you be happy when you won't?
All of us at times are angry, sad,
Nervous, testy, thinking we've been had,
Knowing life for others turned out better,
Sure that in most dealings we're the debtor.
Granted, granted. But fortune is a choice
In which you find your music and your voice,
Vividly in tune with what you see
If you would live your life harmoniously.
None can choose acceptance without seeing
Gifts that come unsought from simply being.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/n-rvvcunRms.

How Lovely to Live as Marriage Intends

November 14, 2013 #763

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

How lovely to live
As marriage intends:
Partners in pleasure,
Passionate friends!
Years come and go;
The story goes on:
Work, will, and wonder,
Each day too soon gone.
None could know better
Truths that all know:
In well-tended joy
Each embraces the woe
That, shared, finds what solace
Hearts can bestow.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite this poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/lHmbgALLMh8.

Veterans Have Claims upon the Hearts

November 7, 2013 #762

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Veterans 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

Veterans have claims upon the hearts
Even of those who railed against their wars.
The years of sacrifice transcend the cause,
Endured through agonies no word imparts.
Reason cannot comprehend such hell,
As strangers murder strangers out of duty.
Nor does the bleak, obscene, nightmarish beauty
Stop haunting dreams that love and rage compel.
Decency demands we do them honor,
Albeit with a hatred of the horror
Yet rampaging through joy, alive and well.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/l0L82l91jf8.

Brooms Inspire Restless Witches

October 31, 2013 #761

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

Brooms inspire restless witches
Ready for their midnight rides,
Overcome by urgent itches
One indulges to survive.
Maybe you will see them soon
Shrieking as they cross the moon.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/kmdGahlM7ZU.

Retirement Is Not a Long Vacation

October 24, 2013 #760

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem about retirement.

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

Retirement is not a long vacation,
Even though at times it may so seem.
The point now is the long-deferred vocation,
In which the work is free to serve the dream.
Retire well, then, as you long well labored,
Embracing well the job you took of need,
Making it a servitude well savored,
Enduring work with joy your heart decreed.
Now, though, you unburdened may pursue
The calling that you always thought was you.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/hMdWlfouqcE.

Often the Absence of Angels Seems Eerie

October 17, 2013 #759

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem about angels, ethics, and religion.

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

Often the absence of angels seems eerie,
Offering glimpses of worlds without end,
Vistas of vistas so vast one gets weary,
A desert of light without phantom or friend.

How will we manage when angels are truly
A future forgotten, a past past recall?
How will we rule when the rules are unruly,
With nothing but null at the heart of it all?

It hasn't been long that the angels are gone,
That the world is a speck of a speck out in space,
That two spheres existed where now there is one --
Heaven the haven beyond time and place.

What will come after the choirs of angels
Are silent for centuries? What will we be?
There is in that silence a scream that estranges
The soul from what shadows the senses can see.

The thoughts of Copernicus were the beginning
Of something that still has just barely begun.
What souls will distinguish salvation from sinning
When humans at last say goodbye to the sun?

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/PJEA7eyTgss.

Even as You Sacrifice Yourself

October 10, 2013 #757

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice.

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

Even as you sacrifice yourself,
In love with love and gratified to give,
Dancing 'cross the ancient inner gulf
Athwart the plain on which each soul must live,
Long-borne burdens lighten into prayer,
Acts of worship meant as acts of care,
Done freely out of gratitude and grace,
Hard – yes, hard – and far more than your share,
And still a gift no pleasure can replace.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/qSDzdMWsiPw.