To Live Is to Be Prey

November 26, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem is a Thanksgiving poem about eating and being eaten.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

To live is to be prey. Meals for microbes.

Horror hangs in the blood like a barracuda

As packs of ravenous viruses howl at the moon.

No flesh is but food. Fierce hunger waits at the crossings

Knowing nothing but lust for the taste of our gristle,

Singing hallelujahs to the Lord.

Give thanks, then, too, for the gift of robust hunger;

In humble gratitude, for the legacy of lust.

Vividly we live and die, our suffering

In perfect harmony with our feeding frenzy;

Nor can we be else but both murderers and murdered,

Grateful for the unsought grace of being.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

November 22: Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

November 23: Thank You for All that You Have Given

November 24: Thanksgiving Is a Moment to Remember

November 25: Thanksgiving Is a Time for Giving Thanks

November 26: To Live Is to Be Prey

Thanksgiving Is a Time for Giving Thanks

November 25, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem is a Thanksgiving poem about compassion for the animals we eat.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks;

However, the reception's not so clear.

As we pass the drumsticks or the shanks,

No Maker holds such severed flesh less dear.

Kindness is a requisite for grace;

So must we be to all that suffer pain.

Gratitude seems slightly out of place

In places where compassion is less plain.

Very few this day will give much thought

In passing to the creatures that they eat.

Nor will we feel the empathy we ought,

Given that we are ourselves but meat.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/than24.html . For more poems about gratitude, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/thanksgivingpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

November 22: Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

November 23: Thank You for All that You Have Given

November 24: Thanksgiving Is a Moment to Remember

November 25: Thanksgiving Is a Time for GivingThanks

Thanksgiving Is a Moment to Remember

November 24, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem is a Thanksgiving poem about friendship.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Thanksgiving is a moment to remember

How little we can do to move the stars.

All we are and have we must surrender,

Nor is Earth less inscrutable than Mars.

Knowing this, we know the need for friends

Sharing both our pleasures and our pain,

Giving, though it may not serve their ends,

In joy the love that will our love sustain.

Very much like water in a lake,

In sum we serve as mirrors to the sky.

No one alone can heaven's picture take.

Given friends, we know the reason why.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

November 22: Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

November 23: Thank You for All that You Have Given

November 24: Thanksgiving Is a Moment toRemember

Thank You for All That You Have Given

November 23, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem is a thank you poem to God.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Thank you for all that you have given:

Happiness and terror, love and death,

Agony and pleasure, pulse and breath,

Night's monstrous dreams, by lusts and longings driven,

Knowledge, hope, despair, and ecstasy.

You gave us, us, by pain and passion riven,

One brief, bright burst of need and glory. Yet,

Unsatisfied, we hunger more to be.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/than10.html . For more poems about gratitude, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/thanksgivingpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

November 22: Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

November 23: Thank You for All that You Have Given

Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

November 22, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem is about gratitude to God for the gift of being.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Gratitude, like love, is part of being,

Remaining when all else is left behind,

Absurd and yet quite natural, a yearning

To give to light the worship of the wind.

In gratitude we find a gift worth giving

To something that no gift can serve at all,

Understanding that the gift of living

Depends upon some will beyond the wall,

Eliciting our gratitude and awe.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

November 22: Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

Thank You for the Gift of Understanding2

November 21, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem thanks God for allowing us to understand how little we understand.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Thank you for the gift of understanding

How little one can hope to understand.

A universe is all we have at hand,

Nothing too confusing or demanding.

Knowledge is like spindrift on the sea

Sitting on the surface of a wave.

Granted one can know how things behave,

Ill-formed to know how they might come to be.

Vast Your Being, beyond imagination!

Immeasurable, of neither shape nor size.

Nor ought one lose one’s sense of adoration,

Gift equal to the gifts of mind and eyes.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/than47.html . For more poems about gratitude, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/thanksgivingpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift ofUnderstanding

Logan

November 20, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is a name poem about enjoying the beauty of nature.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Logan loves the laurel in the glen.

Often when it blooms he wanders there,

Grace bursting in his heart, the urge to share

Alight with all the wonderment within,

Now lost in Eden, free from pain and sin.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

November 17: Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

November 18: I Wanted Nothing Less than Hope

November 19: Fifty-Four

November 20: Logan