Stand Up for Justice, but Always Do It Justly

March 26, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is an epitaph for someone who lived a conscientious life.

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

Stand up for justice, but always do it justly,
Easing conscience conscientiously.
You cannot hope to render right but rightly.
Means are ends, though unintentionally.
One must be the world that one envisions,
Unwaveringly creating what one would,
Requiring that each of one’s decisions
Embody only what is just and good.
In life I tried to be my own ideal,
Careful to remain at heart naïve,
Having a good sense of what is real
Even as I lived as I believed
Life should be, leavening what I must leave.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

Lovers and Good Friends Are Joined by Longing

March 19, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem about love and longing.

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

Lovers and good friends are joined by longing,
The glue that holds humanity together.
We have an innate hunger for belonging,
Designed to make us love each other better.
So do not think dependence is a failing.
It is inseparable from who you are.
You might have a yen for solo sailing,
But loneliness still haunts you from afar.
Allow yourself your weakness. It’s a strength
To have the courage to accept your needs.
Lovers find that courage, or at length
Find, as passion fades, that love recedes.
Passions are tides that, restless, come and go.
But love is a spring that draws from deep below.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/cooo5yQ0fmI.

Mothers Are Not Only of the Womb

March 12, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Mothering Sunday (British Mother’s Day) about non-birth mothers.

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

Mothers are not only of the womb.
One can mother children not one's own.
The love one gives makes gardens out of stone,
However one is kindred to each bloom.
Even as we render tribute due,
Remember that it also is for you,
Song to one who would the task assume.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/qxtwH66_Ljg.

Purified of Arabs or of Jews

March 5, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Purim about why Palestinians and Jews must share their 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

Purified of Arabs or of Jews,
Until the phantoms fade the land will scream,
Remembering the slaughter of the dream,
In which dark deeds that only madmen choose
Made room for those no blessing could redeem.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/_umPRoxHZs4.

Abraham

February 26, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a name poem for Abraham, the leader.

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

Abraham endures, just like a mountain
Beset by storms more fierce than those below.
Resplendent in the sun, his white hair gleaming,
As he speaks, we marvel at his meaning,
Having grasped through him what we well know.
As though each moment of his life were lenten,
More than we, he feels each painful blow.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://youtu.be/t6ii9sOHDm8.

Treat Yourself Each Day to Love and Kindness

February 19, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a poem for the Lunar (Chinese) New Year, the Year of the Sheep, Ram, or Goat, written from the point of view of the sheep.

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

Treat yourself each day to love and kindness.
Heaven is a place within the heart.
Each ritual of faith may well seem mindless,
Yet one is only whole when one is part.
Even though I may seem timid, shy,
A worrier for all who might feel pain,
Remember well the well-wrought reason why:
One gives with love what will one’s love sustain.
Faith is one’s connection to the whole,
The story that makes sense of the event.
How might the self seem separate from the soul
Except through love perceived as permanent?
So must we be filled with love that we
Have just a glimpse of what it means to be,
Embracing freely what we cannot know,
Each suffering what all must undergo,
Patient in the hands of mystery.

© by Nicholas Gordon

You Are the Landscape of My Life

February 12, 2015

Dear Subscriber:

This week’s poem of the week is a love poem for Valentine’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

You are the landscape of my life,
The only place I feel at home,
The view familiar to my heart,
The woods and fields I call my own.

You are the music of my life,
The melody I silent sing,
The harmony beneath my words,
The rhythm of my wandering.

You are the space in which I live,
The boundary of my ecstasy,
The pleasure palace of my dreams,
The flesh that fills my fantasy.

All this you are to me and more,
A soul so much a part of mine
That when I look within, you’re there,
My joy, my love, my valentine.

© by Nicholas Gordon