Why Do I Remain in Exile

March 30, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The twin themes for this week are Passover and Easter, which this year are celebrated at the same time. The first night of Passover is the evening of Good Friday, March 30, and Easter Sunday is April 1.

Today’s poem is a Passover poem about a Jew’s ambivalent urge to live in Israel.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Why do I remain in exile?

I say, "Next year in Jerusalem!"*

Seders come and Seders go.

I feel the pull but not the pain.

I say, "Next year in Jerusalem!"

I do not mean it, not for real.

I feel the pull but not the pain.

My anguish must be self-imposed.

I do not mean it, not for real.

I mean it in my Jewish bones.

My anguish must be self-imposed.

I lie becalmed, and wait, and wonder.

I mean it in my Jewish bones.

Seders come and Seders go.

I lie becalmed, and wait, and wonder:

Why do I remain in exile?

*The traditional cry at the end of every Seder.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/whydoi.html. For more Easter poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html . For more Passover poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

March 26: Enter Now the King, All but Insane

March 27: Passion Is the Wine, and Love, the Glass

March 28: Easter Is a Time of Love

March 29: Enduring Does Not Lead to Happiness

March 30: Why Do I Remain in Exile

Enduring Does Not Lead to Happiness

March 29, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The twin themes for this week are Passover and Easter, which this year are celebrated at the same time. The first night of Passover is the evening of Good Friday, March 30, and Easter Sunday is April 1.

Today’s poem is an Easter poem about the proper way to sacrifice.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Enduring does not lead to happiness.

A person ought not suffer out of duty.

Some choose to sacrifice under duress,

Taking as cruel chance what could be beauty.

Each ought to give for love, as did the Lord,

Reckoning the grace as the reward.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/enduri.html. For more Easter poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html . For more Passover poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

March 26: Enter Now the King, All but Insane

March 27: Passion Is the Wine, and Love, the Glass

March 28: Easter Is a Time of Love

March 29: Enduring Does Not Lead to Happiness

Easter Is a Time of Love

March 28, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The twin themes for this week are Passover and Easter, which this year are celebrated at the same time. The first night of Passover is the evening of Good Friday, March 30, and Easter Sunday is April 1.

Today’s poem is an Easter poem about the redemptive power of human love.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Easter is a time of love,

A time of grief and pain undone,

So we may know the power of

The love that lives in everyone.

Each love we feel, each love we know,

Redeems what would to darkness 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/easter.html. For more Easter poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html . For more Passover poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

March 26: Enter Now the King, All but Insane

March 27: Passion Is the Wine, and Love, the Glass

March 28: Easter Is a Time of Love

Passion Is the Wine, and Love, the Glass

March 27, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The twin themes for this week are Passover and Easter, which this year are celebrated at the same time. The first night of Passover is the evening of Good Friday, March 30, and Easter Sunday is April 1.

Today’s poem is a Passover poem about how ritual shapes and enriches life.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Passion is the wine, and love, the glass,

As ritual reserves the times for drinking.

So life gathers dignity and mass,

Sustained by scripts that free the mind for thinking.

Our love waits upon the white-robed table.

Vintage holy fills our hearts with joy.

Elijah* comes, that wanderer of fable,

Restoring what the wide world would destroy.

*Jewish legend has the prophet Elijah wandering the world to protect Jewish households. At the Seder, a glass is filled with wine for him and the door is opened while the celebrants sing his song.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/passi4.html. For more Easter poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html . For more Passover poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

March 26: Enter Now the King, All but Insane

March 27: Passion Is the Wine, and Love, the Glass

Enter Now the King, All but Insane

March 26, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The twin themes for this week are Passover and Easter, which this year are celebrated at the same time. The first night of Passover is the evening of Good Friday, March 30, and Easter Sunday is April 1.

Today’s poem is about the evolution of sacrifice through Greek myth, Passover, and Easter.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Enter now the king, all but insane,

Accompanied by his daughter, who would be

Sacrificed to calm a raging sea,

The start of much bad blood, revenge, and pain.

Enter now the ram, who would retain

Remnants of that ancient agony,

Put in place of the child the father would free,

As God would not require a child again.

So enter now the lamb, a sacrifice

Self-sought to still that ancient desperation,

One that would turn the lust for blood to love.

Vengeance and desire turn hearts to ice

Even as the soul looks for salvation,

Restored by rites that would a god's heart move.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/entern.html. For more Easter poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html . For more Passover poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

March 26: Enter Now the King, All but Insane

Just as a Wave Is Lifted by the Shore

March 25, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem lets a friend know that you are there for them.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Just as a wave is lifted by the shore,

Then breaks across the slowly rising sand,

So as I watch you weep my feelings pour

Across the wash of what I understand.

I wish I could just take you in my arms

And all your pain could melt into my chest,

And all the violence of passing storms

Could pass through me and finally come to rest.

No words can set things right or presence lend

A miracle to light your darkened way,

But there is solace in a loving friend

And comfort in what I don't have to say.

Whatever circumstance you cannot bear,

Just turn to me, and you will find me there.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/justa2.html. For more friendship poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/friendshippoems.html .

This week’s theme: Friendship

March 19: Courtney

March 20: For Most of Us Life Passes like a Dream

March 21: Forgive Me if I Come into Your Bed

March 22: Friends Are Where One Offloads What

March 23: I Don’t Understand What Happened to Us

March 24: I Sometimes Think that I Could Be Alone

March 25: Just as a Wave Is Lifted by the Shore

I Sometimes Think that I Could Be Alone

March 24, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

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

Today’s poem is about the extreme isolation of a life without God or friends.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I sometimes think that I could be alone:

Really alone, with neither God nor friends.

The people near me then might well be stone:

Just faces on a frieze that never ends.

And I would travel in my mind towards death,

A world within a world sealed like a tomb.

My thoughts would be as silent as my breath,

And, like my breath, expire at my doom.

Such thoughts would make me shudder, were not you

A world where I may enter and find rest.

A rock gives way within, and I walk through

To be in laughing eyes a welcome guest.

Thank God I have you, friend, that I might stay

And be as I could be no other way.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Friendship

March 19: Courtney

March 20: For Most of Us Life Passes like a Dream

March 21: Forgive Me if I Come into Your Bed

March 22: Friends Are Where One Offloads What

March 23: I Don’t Understand What Happened to Us

March 24: I Sometimes Think that I Could Be Alone