Can One Celebrate a Miracle

December 13, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is light and darkness, in honor of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, which began last night, December 12.

Today’s poem is a Chanukah poem about why one might celebrate a miracle one does not believe occurred.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Can one celebrate a miracle,

Having no belief that one occurred?

A row of candles might be beautiful:

Need one recall their reason seems absurd?

Underneath the story lies the meaning

Kindled by the ritual memory,

A tale of faith that one might find redeeming,

However secular one’s faith might be.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/canon2.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Light and Darkness

December 11: Have a Happy Hanukkah

December 12: Bless the Darkness, Bless the Light

December 13: Can One Celebrate a Miracle

Bless the Darkness, Bless the Light

December 12, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is light and darkness, in honor of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, which begins tonight, December 12.

Today’s poem is about the inseparability of darkness and light.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Bless the darkness, bless the light.

Open up your fearful heart.

None can sever soul from breath.

None can sever life from death.

If none can tell the two apart,

Each must bless both bloom and blight.

Sing of beauty, sing of blight,

Ecstasy and dying light!

The miracles that oceans part

Have their blueprints in the heart.

Even at the edge of death,

Life looks for eternal breath.

In every heartbeat, every breath,

Zealous to postpone the blight,

Aware of age, aware of death,

But anxious to prolong the light,

Each sings of sunlight in the heart

To bless with joy a well-played part,

Here to sing and then depart.

Eight days the nation held its breath.

Light eternal lit the heart,

Letting all know death and blight

Endure but briefly, while the light

Needs only faith to conquer death.

Granted faith can conquer death,

And God can seas and oceans part.

But life is darkness filled with light,

Radiant in every breath,

Infinity enduring blight,

Ending with a broken heart.

Life requires a ravenous heart

And every moment feeds on death,

Needing darkness, needing blight,

Dear sweet whole that none can part,

Kindling joy in every breath,

Each aging pulse a pulse of light.

Now love’s lantern lights the heart,

Now death curls around each breath.

And none can blight from blessing part.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/bless8.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Light and Darkness

December 11: Have a Happy Hanukkah

December 12: Bless the Darkness, Bless the Light

Have a Happy Hanukah

December 11, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is light and darkness, in honor of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, which begins on December 13.

Today’s poem is a Hanukkah poem about lighting the Hanukkah lights both without and within.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Have a happy Hanukkah

And light the dancing lights!

Now bright Heaven’s harbinger

Undoes the long, cold nights.

Kindle on your windowsill,

Kindle in your heart,

A symbol of a miracle,

Here to light the dark.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/havea2.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Light and Darkness

December 11: Have a Happy Hanukkah

Happiness Breaches, Bursting from the Deep

December 10, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is holidays, in honor of the holiday season.

Today’s poem is a Happy Holidays poem about the comings and goings of happiness.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Happiness breaches, bursting from the deep,

And then sounds, submerged for humdrum days,

Playing with the heart as music plays,

Passionate, peaceful, poised to laugh or weep.

Years of happiness are tidal, turning,

Having silent commerce with the moon,

Overwhelming sand and flowering dune,

Leaving with an outbound rush of yearning.

Implanted in the frozen soil of winter,

Days of celebration blossom still,

A sign of life’s resilience as the will

Yields nothing to the season, dark and bitter,

Singing of happiness through good and ill.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/happ80.html. For more Happy Holidays poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Holidays

December 4: Hints of Happiness Are All Around You

December 5: How About Those Holidays

December 6: Somewhere There’s a Magic Door

December 7: Holidays Have Changed over the Eons

December 8: Holidays Are Happy Days

December 9: Happiness Is Often Background Music

December 10: Happiness Breaches, Bursting from the Deep

Happiness Is Often Background Music

December 9, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is holidays, in honor of the holiday season.

Today’s poem is a Happy Holidays poem about holidays as the festive markers of time.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Happiness is often background music,

A song one hears but rarely listens to,

Perhaps because the lyrics aren’t new,

Perhaps because one does not often choose it.

Years are gifts to cherish day by day.

However, one remembers year by year --

On birthdays, holidays, days of ritual cheer,

Life’s festive markers placed along one’s way.

In unmarked days is where one’s happiness happens,

Days of work, of longing, of routine,

A quiet happiness, a gentle green,

Yielding, yes, at times to cares and passions,

Still savoring the moment and the dream.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/happ79.html. For more Happy Holidays poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Holidays

December 4: Hints of Happiness Are All Around You

December 5: How About Those Holidays

December 6: Somewhere There’s a Magic Door

December 7: Holidays Have Changed over the Eons

December 8: Holidays Are Happy Days

December 9: Happiness Is Often Background Music

Holidays Are Happy Days

December 8, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is holidays, in honor of the holiday season.

Today’s poem is a holiday poem for a child explaining why the holidays come at this time of year.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Holidays are happy days,

Full of gifts and sweets!

There are lots of games to play,

And lots of toys and treats!

But why does all this happen

At just this time of year

When it is so cold and dark,

With little cause for cheer?

The day that is the shortest,

With the longest night,

Is when the heavens start to give

Each day a bit more light.

And so we mark the turn towards light

With holidays that say

That light’s a miracle, and joy

Can light the darkest day.

And so it is in life: The darkest

Hours will be when

The light will turn, and with it hope

Will be reborn again.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/holi11.html. For more Happy Holidays poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Holidays

December 4: Hints of Happiness Are All Around You

December 5: How About Those Holidays

December 6: Somewhere There’s a Magic Door

December 7: Holidays Have Changed over the Eons

December 8: Holidays Are Happy Days

Holidays Have Changed over the Eons

December 7, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is holidays, in honor of the holiday season.

Today’s poem is a Happy Holidays poem about the differences between ancient and modern holiday celebrations.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Holidays have changed over the eons

As we evolved from hunters into peons,

Pausing by the graves of mysteries

Preserved for family feasts and shopping sprees,

Yearning for what life was meant to be,

Having lived so long unnaturally.

Once upon a time a holiday

Looked a lot more like a holy day,

In which through ritual joy and chanted prayer,

Dancing, dancing, passionately there,

A person might the restless self erase,

Yielding to a ravenous embrace,

Singing, dancing with unearthly 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/holi10.html. For more Happy Holidays poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Holidays

December 4: Hints of Happiness Are All Around You

December 5: How About Those Holidays

December 6: Somewhere There’s a Magic Door

December 7: Holidays Have Changed over the Eons