This Is a Time of Extraordinary Hope

June 19, 2014 #794

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/week.html.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

This is a time of extraordinary hope.
What makes a couple think their love’s for life?
The passion comes and goes as couples cope
With what it means to be a man and wife.
Love that lasts is more than just a feeling,
More than ecstasy or tenderness,
More than empathy, however healing,
More than affection, joy, or happiness.
All these are love, and yet they will not last
Without a daily, conscious act of will.
The bridge between the future and the past
Is the choice to love through good and ill.
Love can be for life, but only when
The choice is made again, again, again.

© by Nicholas Gordon.

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/3fheWnV409I.

Find Your Children Everywhere You Look

June 12, 2014 #793

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/week.html.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Find your children everywhere you look
And nurture them with passion and with pleasure.
The road you're on and those that you forsook
Have joined in what you ultimately treasure.
Each life is filled with love one can pass on,
Returning, turning, burning till one's gone,
Such sweet inheritance as none might measure.

© by Nicholas Gordon.

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/enC4ECBCs7I.

Glad to Graduate and Sad to Leave

June 5, 2014 #792

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

Glad to graduate and sad to leave.
Ready to go, reluctant to depart.
Anxious to learn what more we can achieve.
Divided down the center of the heart.
Underneath our premature nostalgia,
Avidly we dream of things to come.
The moment is a multilayered mixture
In which each part is greater than the sum.
Our longing is the source of memory.
Nor will we soon forget when we were we.

© by Nicholas Gordon.

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/2jv0IoYIRSU.

My Tiny Toes Are Not My Nose

May 29, 2014 #790

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

My tiny toes
Are not my nose.
My chubby thighs
Are not my eyes.

My slender hips
Are not my lips.
My salty tears
Are not my ears.

My soft, soft skin
Is not my chin.
My tummy-tum-tum
Is not my thumb.

My wrinkled palms
Are not my arms.
My tight-clenched fist
Is not my wrist.

And yet I know
I am made so
When they combine
They are all mine!


© by Nicholas Gordon.

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/Z56cZl1xbfI.

Maybe One Must End the War Within

May 22, 2014 #790

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

Maybe one must end the war within.
Each must first find peace within the heart.
Maybe one ought neither lose nor win,
Ought not presume to tell the two apart.
Remember that this means that one’s own hate
Is something one no longer needs to fight.
A hatred of one’s hatred is a state
Like any other in the way of light.
Do, then, in yourself just leave the field,
Abandoning your saber and your shield,
Yielding the long struggle to be right.

© by Nicholas Gordon.

Graduation Means that Now You Must

May 15, 2014 #789

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

Graduation means that now you must
Repay the debt so innocently incurred,
Although the final tally seems absurd,
Demanding more than you consider just.
Unwillingly you had to make your bed
And now must lie in it, though we are all
The better for your choice. We like to call
Individual what is instead
Our common good. We feed on your success,
Nor can we be unscathed by your distress.

© by Nicholas Gordon.

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/RtMCYM_A7Vo.

Maybe No One Wholly Leaves the Womb

May 8, 2014 #788

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Mother’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/week.html.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Maybe no one wholly leaves the womb,
Of which the memory remains as love --
The need for innocence, the unslaked longing,
Hunger for the beauty of belonging,
Each being for the other what might prove
Redemptive, as love makes the moment bloom,
Self losing self in song, in grace, in giving.

© by Nicholas Gordon.

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/6zNHckCP7yU.