Eight Days the Light Continued on Its Own

December 13, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is darkness and light, in honor of Chanukah (or Hanukkah), the festival of lights, the first night of which is December 10.

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

A poem for Hanukkah about each of us as oil lamps burning with infinite light:

Eight days the light continued on its own:
A miracle, they say, but not more so
Than ordinary lives of flesh and bone,
Consuming wicks burned ashen long ago.
Within there is a mystic lake of fire,
Fuel-less energy, power uncelled,
Unmeasured fount of obstinate desire,
Hope burning, where no hope was ever held.
Invisible source of all that's seen or seeing,
Unseen light that animates the void;
Unlit spark of indivisible Being,
Shard of One that cannot be destroyed:
To be so vast a miracle till death
Is why we struggle fiercely for each breath.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/8days.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Darkness and Light
December 7: And Thou Shalt Love
December 8: Cheerful Lights Dance Within Your Window
December 9: Before Earth, Water, and Air Is Fire
December 10: What Is There in the Darkness to Receive
December 11: Blessed Are Those Who Doubt the Word of God
December 12: Careful When You Light the Chanukah Candles
December 13: Eight Days the Light Continued on Its Own

Careful When You Light the Chanukah Candles

December 12, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is darkness and light, in honor of Chanukah (or Hanukkah), the festival of lights, the first night of which is December 10.

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

A poem for Hanukkah about a possible relationship between rote ritual and faith:

Careful when you light the Chanukah candles!
Have some water nearby just in case
A candle teeters at some crazy angle,
Not having been quite twisted into place.
Unexpected things can sometimes happen:
Kindling can blow in across a flame
And make of a charade a conflagration,
Holy fire furnished by The Name.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/carefu.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Darkness and Light
December 7: And Thou Shalt Love
December 8: Cheerful Lights Dance Within Your Window
December 9: Before Earth, Water, and Air Is Fire
December 10: What Is There in the Darkness to Receive
December 11: Blessed Are Those Who Doubt the Word of God
December 12: Careful When You Light the Chanukah Candles

Blessed Are Those Who Doubt the Word of God

December 11, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is darkness and light, in honor of Chanukah (or Hanukkah), the festival of lights, the first night of which is December 10.

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

A poem for Hanukkah about the need to practice one’s faith with an open mind:

Blessed are those who doubt the word of God,
Opening their minds to what might be.
No literal truth is literally true,
Nor can one see unless one sees anew,
In lieu of faith observing faithfully
Each metaphor writ deep within each word.

Murderers would worship every word,
A band of cutthroats in the name of God,
Reasoning unreason faithfully,
Knights of night, whose end cannot but be
Unholy, though the righteous reign anew,
Sure as angels of what words are true.

Let wit and wisdom wonder what is true.
Inside, we face the being of the word,
Light lost within its depths, condemned anew,
Immensities as infinite as God
Trapped within the confines of "to be,"
However we pursue them faithfully.

Grant faith its grace, but reason faithfully,
Always doubting what you know is true.
Being needs no temple fuel to be,
Resting on the reason of a word
In myth, with reason, uttered first by God.
Each mind must light the universe anew,
Letting being be in words anew.

Eight days we light the candles faithfully,
Lest we forget a miracle of God.
Let go the miracle, false or true,
Even as you venerate the word,
Nor do you need to know to fully be.

Sing, then, of words that wake the will to be,
Each generation ravishing anew!
The past and future mingle in a word
Hammered into gold, as faithfully,
Embracing in the beautiful the true,
Lamps alight, we thank an ancient God.
In such a God we find solace anew,
Zealous to be singing faithfully
A text as true in pitch as that first word.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/blesse.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Darkness and Light
December 7: And Thou Shalt Love
December 8: Cheerful Lights Dance Within Your Window
December 9: Before Earth, Water, and Air Is Fire
December 10: What Is There in the Darkness to Receive
December 11: Blessed Are Those Who Doubt the Word of God

What Is There in the Darkness to Receive

December 10, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is darkness and light, in honor of Chanukah (or Hanukkah), the festival of lights, the first night of which is December 10.

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

A Hanukkah poem questioning the existence and nature of God while wishing to celebrate Creation:

What is there in the darkness to receive
The gratitude that clearly is its due?
What if one's filled with awe but can't believe
That anything religion says is true?
It's clearly hogwash that the temple flame
Burned eight whole days on oil just for one;
Yet symbols drawn from tales are not the same
As knowing what the power of God has done.
The leap of faith strikes me as wishful thinking,
To believe in God because one sees one must;
I grant that life and death could use some linking,
But to yield to faith's like giving in to lust.
And yet I wish to celebrate the light
Which quite by chance was born of endless night.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/whatis.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Darkness and Light
December 7: And Thou Shalt Love
December 8: Cheerful Lights Dance Within Your Window
December 9: Before Earth, Water, and Air Is Fire
December 10: What Is There in the Darkness to Receive

Before Earth, Water, and Air Is Fire

December 9, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is darkness and light, in honor of Chanukah (or Hanukkah), the festival of lights, the first night of which is December 10.

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

A poem for Hanukkah about the elemental fire of Creation within us:

Before earth, water, and air is fire,
On which all subsists,
Not as flame on oil,
Nor candle on wax, but with-
In, as in us, each
Element in love.

So we are:
Each organ mad with lust, tingling,
The blood eager to cleanse the spleen, nerves
Hungering for connection.

Gifts are tongues of flame.
A blood cell delivers its gift of oxygen. Why?
Brain cells surrender memories.
Reasons are beside the point.
In love we do only what we cannot help,
Each pinpoint moved by frenzy,
Longing to give, to be accepted, consumed.

Most of us have ideological toes,
Or live brightly, with understandings
More reasonable than real.
Around us, within us, is fire,
Non-consuming,
Delivered from flame.
Do we see it?
Absolute, messageless.
Do we see this dark, unradiant fire?

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/earth.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Darkness and Light
December 7: And Thou Shalt Love
December 8: Cheerful Lights Dance Within Your Window
December 9: Before Earth, Water, and Air Is Fire

Cheerful Lights Dance Within Your Window

December 8, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is darkness and light, in honor of Chanukah (or Hanukkah), the festival of lights, the first night of which is December 10.

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

A poem for Hanukkah about the need, even in the midst of holiday cheer, never to forget the horrors of the Holocaust:

Cheerful lights dance within your window,
Happy to dispel a bit of darkness.
As you display your faith, remember when
No light was light enough to light the wind.
Underneath our joy there must be sorrow
Kindled by a willing act of witness,
A turn to share in love again, again,
Horrors that we would not leave behind.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/cheerf.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Darkness and Light
December 7: And Thou Shalt Love
December 8: Cheerful Lights Dance Within Your Window

And Thou Shalt Love

December 7, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is darkness and light, in honor of Chanukah (or Hanukkah), the festival of lights, the first night of which is December 10.

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

A poem for Hanukkah about light, darkness, and faith:

AND THOU SHALT LOVE

i

All I ever looked for was happiness:
Not for myself only; also for mine.
Dumbstruck, I learned the futility of being good.

Tell me, how does one get pleasure out of life?
How, when so much engenders pain?
Only maudlin moments of forgetfulness
Unloose the tears that turn the blood to wine.

Simple Simon went into a wood,
Hoping to return his damaged wife.
A drunken druid drove him forth again,
Laughing like a god at his distress:
Take her, fool! For you she'll do just fine!

Longing comes easy in darkness. I should
Open my eyes, turn on the light. A knife,
Viciously twisting, argues for pain.
Eagerly I press on, in fear of nothingness.

ii

There! Do you see the light
High on that mountain?
Even here there is

Light! Do you see it?
Only darkness. You see
Reflections of dreams. Here
Darkness covers even

Tomorrow. Who can
Hope any longer for light?
Yet there it is! We must

Go towards it, or else--
Or be of those who love
Darkness, luminous darkness . . .

iii

Wealth isolates, hardship unites.
In darkness people hold hands.
Those only who cry out are comforted.
However we live, death is the same.

And so we come to know Thy name:
Lounging easy in our rights,
Loving only as need demands,

The grace most sought uncelebrated,
Happiness inextricable from shame.
Yet we, too, have known lidless nights.

Hope is not for one who understands.
Even blameless, we are rejected.
All are lost who win the game.
Reason renders only lights.
Those who fear know Thy commands.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/andtho.html. For more Hanukkah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Darkness and Light
December 7: And Thou Shalt Love