Maybe Christmas Means a Little Less

December 22, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25.

Today’s poem is a Christmas poem to an older child, urging him or her to keep Christmas alive within.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Maybe Christmas means a little less

Each year as the enchantment wears away.

Remember that one key to happiness

Remains the joy one feels on Christmas Day.

Years of faith in Santa Claus became

Childhood’s best encouragement to dream,

Having given fantasy a name

Real enough to seem to more than seem.

In memories of wonder, awe, and pleasure,

Sustained by celebrations every year,

There’s a magic one might always treasure,

Making one’s delight seem far more dear.

As childhood fades, let Christmas not fade, too,

So that its joy can still reside in you.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Christmas

December 18: Come to Christmas with Clean Hands and Heart

December 19: Myths Are Our Immortal Mentors

December 20: Everyone Loves Christmas

December 21: Maybe There’s No Magic in the Morning

December 22: Maybe Christmas Means a Little Less

Maybe There's No Magic to the Morning

December 21, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25.

Today’s poem is a Christmas poem about the child’s Christmas surviving in the adult.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Maybe there’s no magic to the morning.

Eventually, life’s a losing game.

Rituals go stale with little warning.

Revelation shrivels to a name.

Yet once each moment was a miracle.

Christmas touched the unsuspecting heart,

Home and Heaven equally empirical,

Reality a play of sense and art.

In everyone that child is still dreaming,

Still living in a world shaped by desire.

Truth is not the fruit of sense but meaning,

More varied than one’s reason might require.

As sunlight gleams according to one’s view,

So may the magic of this day touch you.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/mayb16.html. For more Christmas poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/christmaspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Christmas

December 18: Come to Christmas with Clean Hands and Heart

December 19: Myths Are Our Immortal Mentors

December 20: Everyone Loves Christmas

December 21: Maybe There’s No Magic in the Morning

Everyone Loves Christmas

December 20, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25.

Today’s poem is a Christmas poem for children about how all the animals love Christmas.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Everyone loves Christmas,

Even flies and fleas,

Even seals and snakes and snails,

Beavers, bats, and bees.

Elephants love Christmas,

And hamsters, horses, hares,

Penguins, parrots, porpoises,

Belugas, bedbugs, bears.

Don't you just love Christmas?

All the world's at peace.

Wolves lie down with walruses

While goats give gifts to geese.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Christmas

December 18: Come to Christmas with Clean Hands and Heart

December 19: Myths Are Our Immortal Mentors

December 20: Everyone Loves Christmas

Myths Are Our Immortal Mentors

December 19, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25.

Today’s poem is a Christmas poem about the significance of myth in shaping our lives.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Myths are our immortal mentors,

Each a sculptor of the heart,

Residing at life’s moral center,

Reigning long through love and art.

Years and generations pass,

Christmas lovingly passed on.

Holidays are made to last,

Renewing what might else be gone.

Inevitably, passions pale,

Souls turn skeptical, and yet

The tales of childhood prevail,

Myths too vivid to forget.

Adults might still, or not, believe

Stories whose lost glow they grieve.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Christmas

December 18: Come to Christmas with Clean Hands and Heart

December 19: Myths Are Our Immortal Mentors

Come to Christmas with Clean Hands and Heart

December 18, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25.

Today’s poem is a Christmas poem about making Christmas joyful both without and within.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Come to Christmas with clean hands and heart,

Having dressed appropriately within,

Ready happily to play your part

In making Christmas joyful yet again.

Sing the ancient melodies that bring

To life the season’s harmony and peace.

Maybe you’ll with friends and family sing,

As for one moment want and worry cease

So that your love for living might take wing.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Christmas

December 18: Come to Christmas with Clean Hands and Heart

Happy, Happy Hanukkah

December 17, 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 on December 12.

Today’s poem is a Hanukkah poem comparing the soul to a Hanukkah candle.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Happy, Happy Hanukkah!

As candles dance with light,

Now watch them on the window sill

Undo a bit of night.

Know that you're a candle, too,

Kindled by a flame

Alight with love, the Holy One,

Ha-Shem, which means, The Name.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/happ81.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

December 14: Being in Eternity and Time

December 15: How Beautiful the Hanukkah Lights

December 16: Be Comfortable with Doubt, with Death, with Darkness

December 17: Happy, Happy Hanukkah

Be Comfortable with Doubt, with Death, with Darkness

December 16, 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 on December 12.

Today’s poem is about how love is an eternity within time, even though every flame must burn out.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Be comfortable with doubt, with death, with darkness.

One’s candle will inevitably burn out.

No miracle can make it last forever,

Nor keep two souls eternally together.

In life there is but one way things turn out.

Embrace it, then, in all its senseless starkness.

Sing of life in all its poignant starkness,

Equally of light and gentle darkness,

The timeless end, however time turns out,

Here, where every holy lamp burns out.

Each finds greater happiness together.

Love is a redaction of forever.

In loving one is for a time forever,

Zen-like in one’s sense of senseless starkness,

Aware that one is one, and that together

Both are singly subject to the darkness,

Embracing still a soul that will burn out,

Touched by love, however things turn out,

Having loved, however things turn out.

Given, one will not exist forever

And like a Hanukkah candle will burn out,

Burning beautifully against life’s starkness,

Radiant dancer lighting up the darkness.

In love and longing, dancers dance together,

Each flame more bright and beautiful together,

Loving life however it turns out,

A miracle of light upon the darkness.

Nor need one need more time to taste forever,

Despite the naked truth in all its starkness,

Knowing that in time all flames burn out,

Eventually that even stars burn out.

Now is forever. The only forever. Together

Now is together forever. Life ends in starkness,

And yet one’s time is timeless, it turns out.

Eternity is now. One lives forever,

Light infinite upon a sea of darkness,

Lighting darkness still. Though lights turn out,

Each was still is. Forever is. Together

Now burning out of love amid life’s starkness.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

December 14: Being in Eternity and Time

December 15: How Beautiful the Hanukkah Lights

December 16: Be Comfortable with Doubt, with Death, with Darkness