Gifts Are Not Always Free

September 20, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is romantic love.

Today’s poem is a name and love poem about distinguishing between love as a gift and love as a burden.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Gifts are not always free.

A giver wants to know: Are you enjoying my gift?

Burdens can be sources of intense pleasure.

Recently, unable to distinguish between burdens and gifts,

Indian elephants dragged seventeen tons of teak logs over the Himalayas.

Each of us has made his or her own version of this mistake.

Love is a gift.

Burdens betray themselves by the rattle of their needs.

Each of us wants to know: Am I a burden or a gift?

Very few understand that to be a gift one must receive more than one gives,

Even while burdens come decked out in ribbons and bows.

Refusing a gift brings regret, not guilt.

Lingering doubts may be referred to a mirror.

Yesterday the elephants returned: happy, sweaty, and a good deal wiser.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/gifree.html. For more love poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Romantic Love.

September 19: Dreams Do Come True

September 20; Gifts Are Not Always Free

Dreams Do Come True

September 19, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is romantic love.

Today’s poem is a love poem about what to do when love longed dreamed of becomes a reality.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Dreams do come true, but only when

They make it through despair,

Limping into everyday

Transformed beyond repair.

No dream would be a dream if it

Could pass for something real,

Nor would we sail for paradise

Would it its shoals conceal.

So it is with love: the dream

Long longed for, now possessed,

Must be a dream no longer, but

An emperor undressed.

Stark naked it must come to us

In unaccustomed shame,

And we must take it in our arms

And love it all the same.

And we must love love as it is

That dreams might still come true,

Mangled into miracles

To make our lives anew.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/dreams.html. For more love poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Romantic Love.

September 19: Dreams Do Come True

Each Sacrifices What the Heart Loves Most

September 18, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is giving, in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which falls on September 13 and commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

Today’s poem is a poem for Eid al-Adha about sacrificing what one loves most.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Each sacrifices what the heart loves most,

Imitating Abraham when he

Delivered Isaac to the eternal host,

Although with heavy heart, yet faithfully.

Love does not grasp, but gives away all things,

Aware of something holy in its fire,

Destined to retain the gifts it brings,

Having first relinquished the desire,

As Allah gives one all one would require.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/eachsa.html. For more poems for Eid al-Adha, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/muslimpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Giving.

September 12: Thirty-Five

September 13: Every Moment Sings of Love and Beauty

September 14: Happiness Remains the Drug of Choice

September 15: One Cannot Make Another Happy

September 16: There Are for Giving Many Rationales

September 17: Even Sacrifice May Not Be Pure

September 18: Each Sacrifices What the HeartLoves Most

Even Sacrifice May Not Be Pure

September 17, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is giving, in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which falls on September 13 and commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

Today’s poem is a poem for Eid al-Adha about love as the proper motivation for sacrifice.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Even sacrifice may not be pure,

Intended for the eye and not the heart.

Do, then, out of love make sacrifice

As Abraham once offered up his son.

Love of Allah is what will endure

As fire consumes each lacerated part,

Devouring all but love, that will suffice

However long the sacrifice goes on,

As years and lives through time's cold fingers run.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/evensa.html. For more poems for Eid al-Adha, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/muslimpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Giving.

September 12: Thirty-Five

September 13: Every Moment Sings of Love and Beauty

September 14: Happiness Remains the Drug of Choice

September 15: One Cannot Make Another Happy

September 16: There Are for Giving Many Rationales

September 17: Even Sacrifice May Not Be Pure

There Are for Giving Many Rationales

September 16, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is giving, in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which falls on September 13 and commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

Today’s poem is a philosophical number poem about what moves one to give.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

There are for giving many rationales

Having to do with what one might receive.

In reasons one finds just the afterthought,

Referencing what one's already bought,

The words that may uncertainties relieve.

Yet what one dances to are bacchanales.

The grace of giving ought not be an ought.

What moves us is a love that speaks in shalls,

Organ tones beneath what we believe.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/ther36.html. For more philosophical poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Giving.

September 12: Thirty-Five

September 13: Every Moment Sings of Love and Beauty

September 14: Happiness Remains the Drug of Choice

September 15: One Cannot Make Another Happy

September 16: There Are for Giving ManyRationales

One Cannot Make Another Happy

September 15, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is giving, in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which falls on September 13 and commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

Today’s poem is a psychological poem about the limits of giving.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

One cannot make another happy,

Whatever one might do or say,

For happiness remains a choice

Not even love can hope to sway.

The sacrifice of time and strength

And preference and goods may be

Of help, of course, but cannot calm

The winds that roil a restless sea.

Everything one does, like dust,

Transforms the light in which all live.

But happiness is not a gift

It is within one's power to give.

One can only love, and be

A witness to the life that each

At last must live alone, for good

Or ill beyond a lover's reach.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/onecan.html. For more psychological poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/psychologicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Giving.

September 12: Thirty-Five

September 13: Every Moment Sings of Love and Beauty

September 14: Happiness Remains the Drug of Choice

September 15: One Cannot Make Another Happy

Happiness Remains the Drug of Choice

September 14, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is giving, in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which falls on September 13 and commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

Today’s poem is an anniversary poem about happiness and giving.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Happiness remains the drug of choice,

Antidote for much that ails one.

Praised be those who love both life and others,

Pleased to be, and grateful for that gift,

Yearning only for the things they have.

For happiness remains a conscious choice,

One that makes one more than simply one,

Requiring the harmony of others,

The grasping of one's giving as a gift

Yielding grace no one alone could have.

So may you both each day renew that choice,

In which each satisfies the other one,

X-ing out the urge to ward off others,

The passion to get something for each gift,

Having given all that you might have.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/happ74.html. For more anniversary poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/anniversarypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Giving.

September 12: Thirty-Five

September 13: Every Moment Sings of Love and Beauty

September 14: Happiness Remains the Drug ofChoice