Before Chaos, There Was Perfect Light

December 8, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Hanukkah, which began at sundown on December 2^nd and will end at sundown on December 9^th.

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

A Hanukkah poem about the eternal nature of light:

Before chaos, there was perfect light;

Only light, there was no hint of darkness.

Nor was this moment ever in the past,

Nor can it ever be. Outside time

It simply is. Perfect. Eternal. Pure

Existence. What we, at every moment, are.

Still, we must move downriver. We are

Each, in the end, prepared to turn to pure

Terror at the raging lip of time.

How can we vanish, yet live on in the past?

Life only seems to flow towards darkness:

Open those seams, and you see only light.

Red in the west heralds motion's darkness,

Revealing glories millennia past.

As the Earth spins, so we spin through time;

In gravity's grip, no circle is pure,

No being is Being, yet by being we are

Eternal, forever an instant of light.

Given: that light can only be; that light,

As such, cannot not be; that in time lights are,

But then are not; that nonetheless they are pure

Rays racing far beyond the lips of time,

Infinite, irrevocable; that the past

Exists forever, as such; that darkness

Limits only one's perception of light.

Most experts claim the night is clothed in darkness;

Instinctively, they view the past as past.

Do not assume that what you see in time

Is what appears in visions cold and pure.

Eternal isn't only forever. We are

Living eternally now, fragments of pure

Light--the track, the train, the farmhouse time

Erased. No thing is ever nothing--not the past,

Not loved ones lost, not what we know as darkness.

© 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/chaos.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Hanukkah

12/3: Happiness Comes Wholly from the Heart

12/4: Before You Light the Candles, Say the Blessing

12/5: Time to Light the Hanukkah Lights

12/6: Bees Swarm Along the Fragile Edge of Darkness

12/7: Chanukah Itself’s the Miracle

12/8: Before Chaos, There Was Perfect Light

Chanukah Itself's the Miracle

December 7, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Hanukkah, which began at sundown on December 2^nd and will end at sundown on December 9^th.

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

A Chanukah poem about the miracle of keeping Chanukah alive for millennia of exile:

Chanukah itself's the miracle:

How could we remember all those years,

Aliens lost upon a shoreless sea,

Not only scattered--battered, shattered, tattered,

Unwelcome guests of hosts unmerciful,

Knowing well the wellsprings of our tears,

A life devoured by identity

Holding on to legacies that mattered?

© 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/chanuk.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Hanukkah

12/3: Happiness Comes Wholly from the Heart

12/4: Before You Light the Candles, Say the Blessing

12/5: Time to Light the Hanukkah Lights

12/6: Bees Swarm Along the Fragile Edge of Darkness

12/7: Chanukah Itself’s the Miracle

Bees Swarm Along the Fragile Edge of Darkness

December 6, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Hanukkah, which began at sundown on December 2^nd and will end at sundown on December 9^th.

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

A Hanukkah poem about life as a gift:

Bees swarm along the fragile edge of darkness.

Open wounds attract blood-hungry flies.

Near my heart lie savage little souls

Neatly arrayed to feast upon my life.

In eight days God will be through with miracles.

Even so, life is a gift of love.

So how does one enjoy this gift of love,

Even as one moves from light to darkness?

There is no moment free of miracles,

However swift and deep one's passion flies.

Glory is the dancing quark of life,

Alight with love and lust in all our souls.

Born of the cataclysm, our burgeoning souls

Race towards infinity, love

Infinite, lust infinite, life

Eternal as light billowing into darkness.

Little do we see how far it flies

As we spin through Earth-bound miracles.

Nor can we comprehend these miracles.

Darkness is the center of our souls,

Like still black water in the moonlight. Love

Is of this emptiness; unburdened, it flies

Swiftly in widening circles, skimming the darkness,

A motion outward at the heart of life.

More cry than ocean, more wish than star, life

Is the lyric of an explosion of miracles.

Dream and dung, it is the gospel of darkness;

In a petrie dish, a canticle of souls.

Earth is the stage for a concert of passionate love:

Lettuces and roses, gulls and flies.

Let flies and fish and redwoods sing of life

Equally, of love and miracles;

Nor shall our souls deny their birth in darkness.

© 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/bees.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Hanukkah

12/3: Happiness Comes Wholly from the Heart

12/4: Before You Light the Candles, Say the Blessing

12/5: Time to Light the Hanukkah Lights

12/6: Bees Swarm Along the Fragile Edge of Darkness

Time to Light the Hanukkah Lights

December 5, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Hanukkah, which began at sundown on December 2^nd and will end at sundown on December 9^th.

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

A Hanukkah poem for children about the meaning of the Hanukkah candles:

Time to light the Hanukkah lights,

Eight candles in a row,

One by one for eight whole nights –

Watch them dance and glow!

Time to light the Hanukkah lights

Eight nights in a row,

Remembering that one day’s oil

Burned eight nights long ago!

Time to light the Hanukkah lights,

To watch them dance and play,

Dancing, dancing eight whole nights –

A happy holiday!

© 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/timeto.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Hanukkah

12/3: Happiness Comes Wholly from the Heart

12/4: Before You Light the Candles, Say the Blessing

12/5: Time to Light the Hanukkah Lights

Before You Light the Candles, Say the Blessing

December 4, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Hanukkah, which began at sundown on December 2^nd and will end at sundown on December 10^th.

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

A Hanukkah poem about various functions of the concept of God:

Before you light the candles, say the blessing.

One needs a giver for the gift of light:

Not to answer prayer or make things right;

Not to reward the good or punish sinning;

Instead, to make heart-sense of mystery,

Enduring icon of infinity.

Good God! A portrait of infinity?

An icon we’re interminably blessing?

But our being is a mystery.

Reason has no origin for light.

If the love of God can lessen sinning,

Eradicating wrong, increasing right,

Let God be the champion of right,

Knowing we can’t know infinity,

Engaged in our own struggle against sinning,

Needing someone to receive our blessing,

Noumenon derived from mystery,

A causeless cause of Being, love, and light.

Sing of an imagined source of light,

Embodiment of all that’s good and right,

The portrait hung upon the mystery,

Here to humanize infinity.

As you recite the time-perfected blessing,

Now sing of love, that moves the heart from sinning.

Do we need God to keep ourselves from sinning,

Endowed as we are with reason’s natural light?

Let yourself be tempted by the blessing,

Instinctive impetus for doing right.

Zeal’s too ravenous for finity,

As reason’s boundary line is mystery.

Break like a wave across that mystery!

Each soul must break, must break upon its sinning,

Then draw back into infinity,

Heart ravaged by a loving source of light.

Everything that helps one do what’s right,

Like faith, like wisdom, ritual prayer and blessing,

Lights one’s inner darkness. Sing the blessing,

Ever sinning, ever doing right,

Never far from infinite mystery.

© 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/befor5.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Hanukkah

12/3: Happiness Comes Wholly from the Heart

12/4: Before You Light the Candles, Say the Blessing

Happiness Comes Wholly from the Heart

December 3, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Hanukkah, which began at sundown on December 2^nd and will end at sundown on December 10^th.

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

A Hanukkah poem using the Hanukkah candles as a metaphor for happiness:

Happiness comes wholly from the heart,

A light within illuminating darkness.

Now the candles flicker, now they flare,

Undulating feeling lighting where

Knowledge must give way to faith and art,

Kindled by the sense that gloom is senseless,

And love can make a song even of sadness,

Harmony in which one sings one’s part.

© 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/happ90.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Hanukkah

12/3: Happiness Comes Wholly from the Heart

Happy, Happy Holidays to You

December 2, 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 beginning of the holiday season is Happy Holidays.

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

A Happy Holidays poem about the legacy one derives from generations millennia ago and passes on to one’s children:

Happy, happy holidays to you!

A bit of joy before the winter comes,

Pausing for a holiday or two,

Pausing where the ancient stream still runs.

You know, but cannot know, the generations

Having millennia before you come this way,

Over many rites and revelations

Looking to this turn of light to pray.

In each of us the ancient urge still lives,

Dressed in more contemporary clothes,

A cultural inheritance that gives

You something precious to bequeath to those

Still ready to feel joy down to their toes.

© 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/happ89.html. For more Happy Holidays poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Happy Holidays

11/26: All Our Friends Have Come to Play

11/27: Hail to the Season of Remembrance

11/28: Happiness Is Rarely Melody

11/29: Happy Holidays

11/30: Happiness Could Use Some Recognition

12/1: Happy Holidays Are Rarely Tranquil

12/2: Happy, Happy Holidays to You