Future Selves Are Built on Past Mistakes

May 3, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is acceptance.

Today’s poem is a number poem about seeing grace even in a painful past.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Future selves are built on past mistakes.

One is the sum of what one was, and yet

Retains a bit of undetermined space,

The power to be different, as the net,

Years on, becomes a filigree of lace.

So might one see that everything has grace,

Including all the pain one would forget,

X-ing out nothing, with nothing to regret.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Acceptance

May 1: For Those Who Love, Things Tend to Matter More

May 2: Fortune Is like Music Minus One

May 3: Future Selves Are Built on Past Mistakes

Fortune Is like Music Minus One

May 2, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is acceptance.

Today’s poem is a number poem about how one might shape the music of one’s fortune.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Fortune is like music minus one:

One adds one’s voice to what one has been given.

Remember that, in either rain or sun,

The part one plays should be by beauty driven,

Yearning that will one’s whole session run.

So might one’s music mingle pain and joy,

Engaged in harmony that heals the heart,

Vested in what will one’s loved ones buoy,

Embracing truth with all one’s well-honed art.

Nor need one’s fate one’s happiness destroy.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/fortu4.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Acceptance

May 1: For Those Who Love, Things Tend to Matter More

May 2: Fortune Is like Music Minus One

For Those Who Love, Things Tend to Matter More

May 1, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is acceptance.

Today’s poem is a number poem about how life answers one’s embrace.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

For those who love, things tend to matter more.

In paradise, one has much to lose.

Feelings race like birds upon the shore,

Tallying the risks one can’t refuse,

Yearning for what one is free to choose.

Embracing what one is, one has, one loves

Is what evokes an answering embrace.

Glory comes and goes; acceptance proves

Hardier than passion, time, or place,

The silent turn that yields the gift of grace.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/forth2.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Acceptance

May 1: For Those Who Love, Things Tend to Matter More

Lauren

April 30, 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 was celebrated on April 28.

Today’s poem is a name poem, comparing a woman to a grove of ancient trees.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Lauren is a grove of ancient trees.

Around her is the hush before the word--

Unfinished, like a fluttering of wings.

Resisting words, she shelters wide-eyed things,

Easy in the twilight, as a bird

Nestles in against a cold, dark breeze.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/lauren.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 Will Always Be Sisters

April 30: Lauren

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