A Graphic Illustration

October 14, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week, in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, is Native American history.

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

A poem for Indigenous Peoples’ Day describing how Native Americans in Oregon were told in 1855 that they were about to be inundated with white settlers:

A GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION

Adapted from The Affidavit of Charles Pitt Regarding "The Palmer Treaty, 1855" at Warm Springs, Oregon:

Palmer reached down
And raked up three piles of sand.
And he said, "Can you count the grains
In the three piles? No, you can't.
The white man in number
Is greater than the grains
In the three piles of sand.
And you can't count them.
The white man will come into your country
Like salmon go up rivers.
The great father in Washington
Is like a great chief,
But he can't stop them from coming in.
And you will be covered over by them
For they are so numerous."

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/toshel.html. For more poems about indigenous peoples, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/indigenouspeoplesdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Native American History
October 12: Treaties Are Made to Be Broken
October 13: To Shelter the American Character from Lasting Dishonor
October 14: A Graphic Illustration

To Shelter the American Character from Lasting Dishonor

October 13, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week, in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, is Native American history.

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

A poem for Indigenous Peoples’ Day adapted from a memorial of the ladies of Steubenville, Ohio, requesting fair treatment of Native Americans, 1830:

TO SHELTER THE AMERICAN CHARACTER FROM LASTING DISHONOR

Adapted from the Memorial from the Ladies of Steubenville, Ohio, Protesting Indian Removal, February 15, 1830:

Your memorialists would sincerely deprecate
Any presumptuous interference
On the part of their own sex
With the ordinary political affairs of the country
As wholly unbecoming
The character of American Females.
Even in private life
We may not presume
To direct the general conduct
Or control the acts
Of those who are in the near
And guardian relations
Of husbands and brothers.
Yet all admit that there are times
When duty and affection call on us
To advise and persuade
As well as to cheer and console.
And if we approach the public representatives
Of our husbands and brothers,
Only in the humble character of suppliants
In the cause of mercy and humanity,
May we not hope
That even the small voice of female sympathy
Will be heard?

When, therefore, injury and oppression
Threaten to crush a hapless people
Within our borders,
We, the feeblest of the feeble,
Appeal with confidence to those
Who should be the representatives
Of national virtues
As they are the depositories
Of national powers,
And implore them
To succor the weak and unfortunate.
In despite of the undoubted natural right
Which the Indians have
To the land of their fathers,
And in the face of solemn treaties
Pledging the faith of the nation
For their secure possession of those lands,
It is intended, we are told,
To force them from their native soil,
And to compel them to seek new homes
In a distant and dreary wilderness.
To you, then,
As the constitutional protectors
Of the Indian within our territory,
And as the peculiar guardians
Of our national character
And our country's welfare,
We solemnly and earnestly appeal
To save this remnant of a much-injured people
From annihilation,
To shield our country from the curses denounced
On the cruel and ungrateful,
And to shelter the American character
From lasting dishonor.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/toshel.html. For more poems about indigenous peoples, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/indigenouspeoplesdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Native American History
October 12: Treaties Are Made to Be Broken
October 13: To Shelter the American Character from Lasting Dishonor

Treaties Are Made to Be Broken

October 12, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week, in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, is Native American history.

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

A poem for Indigenous Peoples’ Day containing an adaptation of a proposed treaty with Native Americans in 1783:

TREATIES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN

Adapted from the Congressional Committee Draft Report on Indian Affairs, September 22, 1783:

Thirdly, That as the Indians,
Notwithstanding a solemn treaty of neutrality with Congress
At the commencement of the war,
Notwithstanding all the advice and admonition
Given them during its prosecution,
Could not be restrained
From acts of hostility and wonton devastation,
But were determined to join their arms
With those of Great Britain
And to share their fortunes;
So consequently,
With a less generous people than Americans,
They would be compelled to retire beyond the Lakes.
But as we prefer clemency to rigor,
As we persuade ourselves
That their eyes are open to their error,
And they have found by fatal experience
That their true interest and safety
Must depend upon our friendship,
As the country is large enough
To contain and support us all,
And as we are disposed to be kind to them,
To supply their wants and partake of their trade;
We from these considerations,
And from motives of compassion
Draw a veil over what has passed,
And will establish a boundary line
Between them and us
Beyond which we will restrain our citizens
From hunting and settling,
And within which they shall not come
But for the purpose of trading, treating,
Or other business equally unexceptionable.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/treat3.html. For more poems about indigenous peoples, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/indigenouspeoplesdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: Native American History
October 12: Treaties Are Made to Be Broken

Time Has No Open Channel to Despair

October 11, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A philosophical poem about how time flows past despair:

Time has no open channel to despair.
It never empties out into that sea,
Moving down its streambed endlessly,
Ever flowing past whatever's there.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/timeha.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Time
October 5: Time for Parents Tends to Go Too Fast
October 6: Even So, One’s Time Seems Endless
October 7: Time Has a Way of Making Life Precious
October 8: Understand, Death Has No Use for Time
October 9: Time Tends to Make the Biggest Problems Small
October 10: No Better Time than Now Can Be Imagined
October 11: Time Has No Open Channel to Despair

No Better Time than Now Can Be Imagined

October 10, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A philosophical number poem about the present moment:

No better time than now can be imagined.
In fact, there is no time that is not now.
Nothing was or will be, only is,
Each memory or dream no more than this:
The thought of bloom upon a winter bough.
Yet all of life is full of such phantasms.

For you the moment's much too good to miss.
Open it as far as thoughts allow.
Unhinge its doors, and hear its sunlit passion
Reverberate across the fields of bliss.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/nobett.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Time
October 5: Time for Parents Tends to Go Too Fast
October 6: Even So, One’s Time Seems Endless
October 7: Time Has a Way of Making Life Precious
October 8: Understand, Death Has No Use for Time
October 9: Time Tends to Make the Biggest Problems Small
October 10: No Better Time than Now Can Be Imagined

Time Tends to Make the Biggest Problems Small

October 9, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A philosophical poem about time as a healer:

Time tends to make the biggest problems small.
It heals the bitterest and deepest wound.
There is no pain, no agony at all
That Time won't turn into some sweet, sad tune.

So let Time take you as a river flows
Beyond the violent rapids where you are.
There are things that every woman knows
Once she can see her tempests from afar.

When you are young, your choices wait on you,
Or if they disappear, there'll soon be more.
The things you love and lose, the words you rue,
Sometimes, when you look back, look like a door.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/timete.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Time
October 5: Time for Parents Tends to Go Too Fast
October 6: Even So, One’s Time Seems Endless
October 7: Time Has a Way of Making Life Precious
October 8: Understand, Death Has No Use for Time
October 9: Time Tends to Make the Biggest Problems Small

Understand, Death Has No Use for Time

October 8, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

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

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

A philosophical epitaph about time and death:

Uunderstand, death has no use for time.
No time is any better, any worse.
Cancel twenty years or eighty-nine,
Love's a loss one cannot reimburse.
Each of us lives for an eternity,
Dying only after our forever.
Early or late, we vanish equally,
All unconscious of the ties we sever,
No longer either separate or together.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/unders.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Time
October 5: Time for Parents Tends to Go Too Fast
October 6: Even So, One’s Time Seems Endless
October 7: Time Has a Way of Making Life Precious
October 8: Understand, Death Has No Use for Time