No Matter How We Have Fought, We Will Always Be Sisters

April 29, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is trees in honor of Arbor Day, which is celebrated today, April 28.

Today’s poem is a wedding poem comparing two sisters to two trees planted close together.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

No matter how we have fought, we will always be sisters.

Neither marriage nor distance nor children will change

The frictional fondness, part balm and part blisters,

No dawn can diminish nor passion make strange.

Like two trees with their wrestling roots underground,

Fighting for sun while restraining the wind,

By close and protracted proximity bound,

We've been shaped by a force that no fate can rescind.

And so it's with undaunted pleasure that I

Bid farewell to a part of myself, for I know

That beyond the illusions of what, when, and why,

We'll be together wherever we go.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/nomatt.html. For more wedding poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Trees

April 24: Find Your Perfect Mentor in a Tree

April 25: For Someone Who Devotes His Life to Trees

April 26: A Tree Is like a Frozen Dancer

April 27: All of Us Can Take Our Cue from Trees

April 28: A Tree Is a Gigantic Hand

April 29: No Matter How We Have Fought, We WillAlways Be Sisters

A Tree Is a Gigantic Hand

April 28, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is trees in honor of Arbor Day, which is celebrated today, April 28.

Today’s poem is an Arbor Day poem about the importance of trees.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

A tree is a gigantic hand

That grips the grateful earth,

Holding it together so that

Seeds might find a home.

Else the soil would turn to sand,

The land of little worth

To those whose favored habitat

Depends on fertile loam.

The tree then filters well the rain

And holds the soil in place,

Feeds it with its fallen leaves

And keeps it moist with shade.

No husbandry could be so sane,

No art so full of grace,

No well-wrought words so apt to please,

No love so well repaid.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/atree2.html. For more poems for Arbor Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/arbordaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Trees

April 24: Find Your Perfect Mentor in a Tree

April 25: For Someone Who Devotes His Life to Trees

April 26: A Tree Is like a Frozen Dancer

April 27: All of Us Can Take Our Cue from Trees

April 28: A Tree Is a Gigantic Hand

All of Us Can Take Our Cue from Trees

April 27, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is trees in honor of Arbor Day, which falls on April 28.

Today’s poem is an Arbor Day poem about modeling our behavior on the behavior of trees.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

All of us can take our cue from trees,

Relating only symbiotically,

Becoming just what those who need us need

Out of need for all that they can give.

Remember: Without trees we could not breathe.

Dependence rests on dual dependencies,

As birds who seek their shelter sow their seeds.

Yet we destroy the friends we need to live.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/allofu.html. For more poems for Arbor Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/arbordaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Trees

April 24: Find Your Perfect Mentor in a Tree

April 25: For Someone Who Devotes His Life to Trees

April 26: A Tree Is like a Frozen Dancer

April 27: All of Us Can Take Our Cue from Trees

A Tree Is like a Frozen Dancer

April 26, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is trees in honor of Arbor Day, which falls on April 28.

Today’s poem is an Arbor Day poem about the beauty of trees.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

A tree is like a frozen dancer,

Redolent with grace,

Branches poised dramatically,

Open arms in place.

Revel in its patient passion,

Durable delight,

A deep and quiet ecstasy

Yearning for the light.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/atreei.html. For more poems for Arbor Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/arbordaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Trees

April 24: Find Your Perfect Mentor in a Tree

April 25: For Someone Who Devotes His Life to Trees

April 26: A Tree Is like a Frozen Dancer

For Someone Who Devotes His Life to Trees

April 25, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is trees in honor of Arbor Day, which falls on April 28.

Today’s poem is a number poem for a forest ranger.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

For someone who devotes his life to trees,

Of whom it may be said he does much good,

Rejoicing in the natural harmonies

That come from land with no one else to please,

Yielding grace instead of wheat or wood.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/forso2.html. For more poems for Arbor Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/arbordaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Trees

April 24: Find Your Perfect Mentor in a Tree

April 25: For Someone Who Devotes His Life toTrees 

Find Your Perfect Mentor in a Tree

April 24, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is trees in honor of Arbor Day, which falls on April 28.

Today’s poem is a number poem for an actress, urging her to be like a tree.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Find your perfect mentor in a tree,

In something rooted firmly to the ground,

Free to soar up high into the heavens,

To reach for light, to shimmer, to astound,

Yet also to reach deep where none can see.

So might your roots explore the rich, dark soil

Even as your branches seek the sun,

Vested in the gift you have been given,

Evangelist of beauty, passionate one,

Not able to tell ecstasy from toil.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/findy2.html. For more poems for Arbor Day, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/arbordaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Trees

April 24: Find Your Perfect Mentor in a Tree

Free Markets and the Wilderness

April 23, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is the environment in honor of Earth Day, which is celebrated today, April 22.

Today’s poem is a political poem about the myths of free markets and the wilderness.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Free markets and the wilderness

Are equally fictitious,

Myths of the nineteenth century,

In turn naïve and vicious.

One assumes an ecosphere

That never was, a place

Missing one key animal –

The indigenous human race

That for millennia lived there,

And like the wolves and bees,

Created the true ecosphere,

The one the white men seized

And held as their dominion

For farms and homes and schools,

For factories and offices,

And, yes, for nature’s jewels

That they then called the wilderness,

Curated for vacations,

While those who had once lived there were

Removed to reservations.

The market also never was

Nor ever could be free,

Any more than wilderness,

Of its humanity.

All markets are manipulated

Out of need or greed,

And that’s the only law, though

It’s one you’ll rarely read.

For few would waive advantage to

Unfettered trade restore,

Or see their families starve

To obey some so-called law.

The myth of the free market is

A tool to bludgeon those

Whose interests would be served

By protections they propose,

While those who see the market as

Pristine as wilderness

Themselves break every rule

That might cause them to earn less.

Free markets and the wilderness:

Two myths some would infer

From what would serve their interests.

But of course they never were.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: The Environment

April 17: From Desert to Forest, from Sun to Shade

April 18: Twenty-Eight5

April 19: Thirty-Five8

April 20: Twenty-Six4

April 21: Thirty-Six7

April 22: Twenty-Eight6

April 23: Free Markets and the Wilderness