Every Holiday Makes Life More Special

April 20, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Easter and Passover. The first night of Passover was on April 19^th, and Easter is celebrated on April 21^st.

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

A poem for both Easter and Passover for someone who is of both Jewish and Christian heritage:

Every holiday makes life more special

And waters well the roots of one’s relations.

Some are more and some are less essential,

Though all are built upon the same foundations.

Each holiday, of course, has its own story,

Religion, rites, meaning, icons, beauty,

Practices that perpetuate some glory,

All mitzvot combining joy and duty.

Still, if one’s a bridge between two cultures,

Savoring the holidays of both,

One can see, beneath their varied pleasures,

Vaults haunted by the same primeval ghosts.

Each soul depends on holidays to be

Restored to an else unclaimed legacy.

© 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/everyh.html. For more Easter poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html . For more Passover poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

4/15: Every Garden Needs Diversity

4/16: Each Moment Is a Miracle

4/17: Everyone at Times Is Resurrected

4/18: Here We Have a Story for the World

4/19: Perhaps a Meal Ought Not Bear So Much Weight

4/20: Every Holiday Makes Life More Special

Perhaps a Meal Ought Not Bear So Much Weight

April 19, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Easter and Passover. The first night of Passover is tonight, April 19^th, and Easter is celebrated on April 21^st.

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

A Passover poem about the Seder, or Passover meal:

Perhaps a meal ought not bear so much weight.

A dining room is not a synagogue.

Sometimes, however, food's a pedagogue.

Sometimes one's best text is what one ate.

One finds in food the sense in many senses,

Vested in a symbol that will last.

Even as a people needs its past,

Ritual foods dismantle time's defenses.

© 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/perha6.html. For more Passover poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

4/15: Every Garden Needs Diversity

4/16: Each Moment Is a Miracle

4/17: Everyone at Times Is Resurrected

4/18: Here We Have a Story for the World

4/19: Perhaps a Meal Ought Not Bear So Much Weight

Here We Have a Story for the World

April 18, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Easter and Passover. The first night of Passover is April 19^th, and Easter is celebrated on April 21^st.

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

A Passover poem about the universality and endurance of the story of Passover:

Here we have a story for the world,

A tale of justice served and freedom won,

Principles of goodness, universal,

Printed out on stone by God's own hand.

Yes, the past was bloody, and the old

Promise was by faithlessness undone.

And wonders ceased, memories turned brittle,

Shadows fell, and love turned into land.

Still, the story breathes the air of worlds

Old and new, a tale not writ in stone,

Vast as the hard history of a people

Ever changing, ever one, a grand

Recital running through time's glass like sand.

© 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/herew2.html. For more Passover poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

4/15: Every Garden Needs Diversity

4/16: Each Moment Is a Miracle

4/17: Everyone at Times Is Resurrected

4/18: Here We Have a Story for the World

Everyone at Times Is Resurrected

April 17, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Easter and Passover. The first night of Passover is April 19^th, and Easter is celebrated on April 21^st.

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

An Easter poem about emotional resurrection:

Everyone at times is resurrected.

A person’s passion needs to be reborn.

So some turmoil ought to be expected;

Troubled feelings ought not be rejected;

Each muddled midnight leads one to the dawn,

Restoring the sweet sun one thought was gone.

© 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/every9.html. For more Easter poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

4/15: Every Garden Needs Diversity

4/16: Each Moment Is a Miracle

4/17: Everyone at Times Is Resurrected

Each Moment Is a Miracle

April 16, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Easter and Passover. The first night of Passover is April 19^th, and Easter is celebrated on April 21^st.

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

An Easter poem about the miracle of each moment:

Each moment is a miracle,

An is that cannot be,

Singing down an alleyway

That leads to unobstructed day,

Each soul a canticle

Rising from the sea.

© 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/eachm3.html. For more Easter poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

4/15: Every Garden Needs Diversity

4/16: Each Moment Is a Miracle

Every Garden Needs Diversity

April 15, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Easter and Passover. The first night of Passover is April 19^th, and Easter is celebrated on April 21^st.

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

A poem for both Easter and Passover about the need for diversity:

Every garden needs diversity,

As grace and function both require it.

So ought gardeners desire it

To make a rich and robust harmony.

Every faith needs faiths that it might be

Resistant to the skeptics who surround it,

Pleased to have believers all around it –

Although segmented, a community.

So is life impoverished by a sameness

Self-imposed to ward off painful change,

Often through a fear that faith be lost.

Very little that one does is blameless.

Each embrace is not without its cost,

Redeemed by love, to which no soul is strange.

© 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/everyg.html. For more Easter poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html . For more Passover poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Easter and Passover

4/15: Every Garden Needs Diversity

As Though I Were Just Flowing, Flowing

April 14, 2019

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A poem from the point of view of someone with Alzheimer’s:

As though I were just flowing, flowing,

Leaving not a trace behind,

Zest for life not one whit less,

However blank the roving mind;

Emptiness the space for being

In the moving moment still,

Meaning nothing more than meaning,

Each ellipse elliptical;

Reminiscences like flowers

'Ere the garden was convened,

So sweet the disconnected hours . . .

© 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/asthou.html. For more poems about health, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/healthpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Health

4/8: Give Your Pain a Bit of Gratitude

4/9: Thirty-Eight Is Running for Her Life

4/10: When Life Becomes a Sea of Pain

4/11: Grace Comes with a Patina of Pain

4/12: Forty-Nine Is on the Edge of Fifty

4/13: Fractures Rarely Heal Right on Their Own

4/14: As Though I Were Just Flowing, Flowing