Your Legacy Must Be Both Love and Fear

April 8, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem is about passing on the genetic tendency for breast cancer.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Your legacy must be both love and fear.

I know that when you died, you feared for me.

The family curse you carried in your breast

Was not a gift you wanted to pass on.

But fear of it, just like my love for you,

Must linger in my heart, unwelcome guest!

And as I weep for your too early death,

I also can hear rumblings of my own.

Ah, Mother! We are linked like paper dolls,

A line of little cutouts in a row.

I see my clearest memories in my mirror

And feel your anguish bloom beneath my breast.

For this, my love for you is more, not less.

In our misfortune there's a common grace:

For me, in that you must have grieved for me;

For you, in what you knew I’d feel for 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/yourle.html. For more poems health and sickness, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/healthpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three

April 3: Stephen

April 4: Treat Yourself to All the Best of Life

April 5: You Are the Rose About to Bloom

April 6: Flowers Flourish in Their Proper Clime

April 7: I Wish for You One Thing, and That Is Love

April 8: Your Legacy Must Be Both Love and Fear

I Wish for You One Thing, and That Is Love

April 7, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem consists of wishes for a newborn child.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I wish for you one thing, and that is love:

Love for life, and pure, unfettered joy

At being here upon this vivid earth.

May great pleasure come from giving pleasure,

And love that streams out from your burning heart

Light the darkened world and make it bloom.

I wish you to be loved both well and long

By all those whom you love; that these be many,

Among whom, not the least, might be yourself.

May you love the beautiful and good,

And always act with honesty and justice,

Being what you would that others be.

But most of all, I wish for you a love

Into which you might plunge out of passion,

And in it find serenity and peace.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three

April 3: Stephen

April 4: Treat Yourself to All the Best of Life

April 5: You Are the Rose About to Bloom

April 6: Flowers Flourish in Their Proper Clime

April 7: I Wish for You One Thing, and That Is Love

Flowers Flourish in Their Proper Clime

April 6, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem is a number poem for someone who has just moved to a new state.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Flowers flourish in their proper clime,

In which they find the sunlight, soil, and rain

Favorable to who they really are.

Then they and their environment combine,

Yielding leaf to soil to leaf again.

So might a seed blown hither from afar

Implant itself, co-fashioning its room,

Xerophyte or hydrophyte in bloom.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/flowe3.html. For more number poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three

April 3: Stephen

April 4: Treat Yourself to All the Best of Life

April 5: You Are the Rose About to Bloom

April 6: Flowers Flourish in Their Proper Clime

You Are the Rose About to Bloom

April 5, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem is from parents to their daughter about a difference in perspective.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

You are the rose about to bloom,

The color soon to wake,

The perfume set to scent the breeze,

The bud about to break.

You stand upon the lip of time

Alight with what will be,

And see yourself out to the sky

Across the open sea.

We see you vertically, a gift

Too beautiful to plumb,

And treasure all the years you were

And all the years to come.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three

April 3: Stephen

April 4: Treat Yourself to All the Best of Life

April 5: You Are the Rose About to Bloom

Treat Yourself to All the Best of Life

April 4, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem is a number poem about what brings the heart to bloom.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Treat yourself to all the best of life!

Have some love and friendship, passion, beauty!

In these you’ll find a lasting happiness,

Regardless of the risk of pain or stress,

The tough commitment to some long-term duty.

Yet some find little more than constant strife.

Ecstasy, adventure, wealth, and things

Inward flow to vanish in the self,

Granting much in pleasure, less in joy.

Hearts rarely come to full bloom on the shelf,

Though watered well in sun their sweet love sings.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/treat2.html. For more philosophical poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three

April 3: Stephen

April 4: Treat Yourself to All the Best of Life

Stephen

April 3, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem is a name poem from a mother to her still-born child.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Stephen lived his life within my womb.

Though brief, it was a rich, full life and good.

Each day I told him of my love in ways

Perhaps most intimate, my silent phrase

Heard in the heart directly, blood to blood.

Each life must be redeemed within its doom,

Needing only love to make it bloom.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/stephe.html. For more poems about stillbirth and miscarriage, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/miscarriagepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three

April 3: Stephen

Fifty-Three3

April 2, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem is a number poem for a late bloomer.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Fifty-three reveals herself at last

In full career, a blossom that is blooming.

Fortune, time, and will have had their way,

Though, looking back, it sometimes seems like fate,

Years of choices that have led her here.

There is no point in questioning the past,

However one might find it all-consuming.

Remember, one is ever unbaked clay,

Early on, of course, but also late,

Embraced by shaping hands upon the wheel.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/53c.html. For more number poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three