Congratulations on Your Graduation

May 12, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is graduation since many colleges and universities have their graduations in May.

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

A graduation poem about facing an uncertain future with the advantage of the knowledge gained in school:

Congratulations on your graduation,

Opening a door not easily reached!

Now go through it: on the other side

Great mountains become hills, and then just fields

Rolling eastward towards a rising sun.

All now is success and celebration,

The music of deeds done and barriers breached.

Underneath, uncertainties still glide

Lean and hungry as the sweet day yields,

And golden moments through your fingers run.

The rock on which you stand is your creation,

Illustrating what your teachers preached

Of learning and the provenance of pride.

Nor need you fear the wind, as knowledge shields

Such as earn it from what storms may come.

© 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/congr4.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

May 11: Alma Maters Nourish More than Mind

May 12: Congratulations on Your Graduation

Alma Maters Nourish More than Mind

May 11, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is graduation since many colleges and universities have their graduations in May.

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

A graduation poem about the continuing value of a liberal education:

Alma maters nourish more than mind:

Light within illuminates the whole,

Making one of multitudes combined,

Allowing each the passion of its soul.

Maybe we'll forget much that we've learned

As we narrow to a single road.

The powers we were given we have earned,

Ever the way blessings are bestowed,

Riches not retained until returned.

© 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/almama.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

May 11: Alma Maters Nourish More than Mind

Happiness, like Most Things, Comes from Mothers

May 10, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on May 10.

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

A Mother’s Day poem about how a mother’s love is the basis for all other love:

Happiness, like most things, comes from mothers.

An amniotic universe is rare.

Paradises aren't found with others,

Perhaps because we must breathe our own air.

Yet even after paradise, we find

Mothers are a bath of warm affection.

Only mothers' love is truly blind

To guarantee all errant souls protection.

However we find love, it can be only

Evanescences of memories

Retained from when we never could be lonely,

'Ere we left our mother's outsized knees.

So good it is to have that happiness

Designed to grace each subsequent caress,

All future love and joy to underlie,

Yearning backwards towards a mother's sigh.

© 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/happi2.html. For more Mother’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Mother’s Day

5/4: Mothers Are the Archetypes of Love

5/5: I Know I’m No Replacement for a Child

5/6: Although a Daughter, I Write This as a Mother

5/7: Daughters-in-Law Are Our Grandchildren’s Mothers

5/8: From the Distance of Our Separation

5/9: Happy First Mother’s Day

5/10: Happiness, like Most Things, Comes from Mothers

Happy First Mother's Day

May 9, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on May 10.

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

A Happy 1^st Mother’s Day poem:

Happy first Mother's Day!

A joint venture of

Puberty, pregnancy,

Poop, pee, and love!

Yet speaking of mothers,

Maybe you've heard

Of how much sheer wonder

There is in a word:

Home to each pilgrim,

Enduring embrace,

Roost for each rambler

'Twixt grievance and grace;

Salve for each wound,

Dappling despair,

A love one must leave

Yet always is there.

© 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/happ59.html. For more Mother’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Mother’s Day

5/4: Mothers Are the Archetypes of Love

5/5: I Know I’m No Replacement for a Child

5/6: Although a Daughter, I Write This as a Mother

5/7: Daughters-in-Law Are Our Grandchildren’s Mothers

5/8: From the Distance of Our Separation

5/9: Happy First Mother’s Day

From the Distance of Our Separation

May 8, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on May 10.

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

A Mother’s Day poem from a grownup child looking back with love at a difficult adolescence:

From the distance of our separation

I see the whole of which I was a part;

I see the way my temper tore your heart,

And then the love beneath the laceration.

I see the landscape shaping our relation:

Your fear that I might choose with little art,

My anger at the dreams you would impart,

The ancient paths that lead to confrontation.

But knowledge needn't linger in regret,

Nor wait upon some wind to clear its sky.

We are none the worse for what is gone.

The moments that I never will forget

Are those whose careless grace must make me cry,

Safe within a heart forever won.

© 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/fromth.html. For more Mother’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Mother’s Day

5/4: Mothers Are the Archetypes of Love

5/5: I Know I’m No Replacement for a Child

5/6: Although a Daughter, I Write This as a Mother

5/7: Daughters-in-Law Are Our Grandchildren’s Mothers

5/8: From the Distance of Our Separation

Daughters-in-Law Are Our Grandchildren's Mothers

May 7, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on May 10.

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

A Mother’s Day poem to a daughter-in-law:

Daughters-in-law are our grandchildren's mothers.

As such, they carry our fortunes downstream.

Under their guidance, our hopes become others',

Giving their force to a much larger dream.

How lucky we are to have you for the carer

That nurtures the hearts of our hearts, that they may

Each be a lover, a giver and sharer,

Remaking the world in their image each day.

So do we all, like streams from the mountains,

In time become joined in the souls we have made,

Now mingled forever, eternal companions,

Linked by our love in a bond that won't fade.

As you in your noontime your work of love do,

We watch from the hillside, grateful for you.

© 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/daught.html. For more Mother’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Mother’s Day

5/4: Mothers Are the Archetypes of Love

5/5: I Know I’m No Replacement for a Child

5/6: Although a Daughter, I Write This as a Mother

5/7: Daughters-in-Law Are Our Grandchildren’s Mothers

Although a Daughter, I Write This as a Mother

May 6, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on May 10.

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

A Mother’s Day poem from a single mother to her mother, who, through the death of another daughter, is raising a granddaughter:

Although a daughter, I write this as a mother.

We're both mothers now, of child-daughters:

You, a grandmother forced to be a mother,

And I, a widow, alone with my fatherless daughter.

Death has thus shaped both our lives in ways

We would not have chosen. Yet life is still the bright,

Painfully lovely thing it was always:

Our children like dancers on a dark, splendid night,

Needing our loves as I needed yours; your love

The same song as ever, a lullaby I remember

So well from my time in your arms. We move

In slow spirals towards the stars. September

Has weeks like June, yet is closer to the fall.

Love has no answers, yet its beauty answers all.

© 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/althou.html. For more Mother’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Mother’s Day

5/4: Mothers Are the Archetypes of Love

5/5: I Know I’m No Replacement for a Child

5/6: Although a Daughter, I Write This as a Mother