Graduates Are People with Degrees

May 22, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week in honor of the many college graduations taking place this month is graduation.

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

A graduation poem about the real value of an education:

Graduates are people with degrees,

Rewarded with some letters by their names.

An education must be more than these.

Doubtful bosses aren't playing games.

Unless you know the things you need to know,

And have a mind honed well by what you've learned,

The piece of paper might as well be snow –

It is the least of what you here have earned.

Of what value have these hard years been?

Now that depends on how much you put in.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/grad10.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

5/21: Congratulations on Your Doctorate

5/22: Graduates Are People with Degrees

Congratulations on Your Doctorate

May 21, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week in honor of the many college graduations taking place this month is graduation.

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

A graduation poem about the difficulties and rewards of earning a doctorate:

Congratulations on your doctorate!

One must not only dare, but persevere,

Not giving in to stress, fatigue, or fear,

Grinding out the hours obdurate.

Rewards, we hope, will be commensurate:

A passionate and interesting career;

The joy of making truth a bit more clear,

Unafraid to speak your mind on it.

Let your happiness for now take wing

As you rest on the mountaintop awhile,

The victor in your struggle with yourself.

In time, of course, the world will cease to sing.

One must at length that piece of paper file,

No less basking in one’s inner smile,

Still savoring one’s well-earned inner wealth.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/congr5.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

5/21: Congratulations on Your Doctorate

Forty-Six3

May 20, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A number poem in which one is the instrument of God’s music:

Forty-six takes pleasure in the act

Of being, as each moment sings of joy.

Regardless of the certainty of death,

There's beauty in the light that spirits buoy,

Yielding truths one need not take for fact.

So does one live within the house of breath,

Instrument of what none can destroy,

Xylophone among the bric-a-brac.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/46c.html. For more poems about religion, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/religiouspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well

5/17: If Reason Is the Word, Faith’s the Music

5/18: Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages

5/19: Little Do the Others Know

5/20: Forty-Six3

Little Do the Others Know

May 19, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A religious poem in which the poet speaks to God about the merciless nature of truth:

Little do the others know

How much I hurt inside.

But you, who must know everything,

Care little for my pride.

You, with eyes of steel, rebut

Without a word my pain,

And with a passion pitiless

Undo me once again.

The truth is ever loving, though

It recks not how we feel.

And you, who are the truth, love me

Too much to let me heal.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/littl2.html. For more poems about religion, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/religiouspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well

5/17: If Reason Is the Word, Faith’s the Music

5/18: Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages

5/19: Little Do the Others Know

Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages

May 18, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A number poem about the eternal nature of the soul:

Souls seem to stay the same; the body ages.

In time we change, though somehow souls remain

X’s anchored deep beneath the sea,

The bobbing buoys that lean and shift and sway,

Yet mark their place as life goes through its stages.

For throughout our joy, guilt, ecstasy, and pain;

In spite of all the love along the way;

Vivid though our passions, prayers, and rages;

Each soul still sojourns in eternity.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/soulss.html. For more poems about religion, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/religiouspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well

5/17: If Reason Is the Word, Faith’s the Music

5/18: Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages

If Reason Is the Word, Faith's the Music

May 17, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A poem comparing reason to words and faith to music:

If reason is the word, faith’s the music.

One yields sanity; the other, grace,

Allowing those who have the heart to choose it

To dance through life with Being face to face.

One need not, of course, turn on the music.

Words alone are not devoid of grace.

For cool-eyed skeptics who choose not to choose it,

Faith paints on the void a dancer’s face.

Can one, ought one do without the music?

Does not silence yield a deeper grace?

Still, the song’s so beautiful some choose it,

A truth one need not doubt or fear to face.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/ifreas.html. For more poems about religion, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/religiouspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well

5/17: If Reason Is the Word, Faith’s the Music

Reason Doesn't Travel Well

May 16, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A Ramadan poem about the limitations of reason:

Reason doesn’t travel well

Across the desert sand.

Maybe it needs quince to quell

A hunger for command.

Do not think it will survive

A long and thirsty camel ride,

No nutrient near at hand.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/reaso7.html. For more poems for Ramadan, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/ramadanpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well