Safe Within the Womb of Expectation

December 16, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Season’s Greetings.

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

A Season’s Greetings poem about the pleasures and the difficulties of returning to one’s childhood home for the holidays:

Safe within the womb of expectation,
Each dancer finds anticipated joy,
A rich routine of choreographed sensation,
Sweet rites no repetition can destroy.
On certain holidays one turns towards home,
Needing to reprise one's childhood part,
Sustain the sense that one is not alone,
Greet again the family at one's heart.
Return, then, to a place you cannot go,
Embracing what you can no longer hold.
Each moment is a print in drifting snow;
The wind obliterates all things but the cold.
Instantly you are a child again,
Not only in your joy but in your pain.
Grace requires all your strength and love,
Serving only those who dancers prove.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/safewi.html. For more Season’s Greetings poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html.

This week’s theme: Season’s Greetings
December 14: Sing of Love, That Graces Every Season
December 15: Say There’s Neither Santa Claus nor God
December 16: Safe Within the Womb of Expectation

Say There's Neither Santa Claus nor God

December 15, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Season’s Greetings.

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

A Season’s Greetings poem to someone who recently joined the Unitarian Universalist church:

Say there's neither Santa Claus nor God;
Eight days of light require eight days of oil;
All humankind is rich, recycled sod;
Souls can't shuffle off this mortal coil.
One longs for a community of spirit
Not based on faith in something mystical,
Sustained by love of life as we must live it,
Gift that is itself a miracle.
Reason seems to one most reasonable,
Even though there's much it can't explain.
Embracing faith seems inconceivable;
The act of prayer seems poignant but inane.
In such a case, one joins a non-church church,
Needing for one's spiritual search
Grace that comes from the pursuit of good
Shared with those who will the world one would.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/saythe.html. For more Season’s Greetings poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html.

This week’s theme: Season’s Greetings
December 14: Sing of Love, That Graces Every Season
December 15: Say There’s Neither Santa Claus nor God

Sing of Love, That Graces Every Season

December 14, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Season’s Greetings.

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

A Season’s Greetings poem about why love is especially needed in this season of cold and darkness:

Sing of love, that graces every season,
Eden's child dressed in robes of time,
A dancer through long hallways lined with reason,
So beautiful that few remain behind.
Of love then sing, and kindness, and affection,
Needing warmth as winter settles in.
Sing of loyalty, life-long connection,
Granted those who light the lamp within.
Renew each day that sacramental fire,
Each day again choose love, an act of will
Emanating from life's chief desire --
To love and to be loved and cherished still.
In this season of extended darkness,
Now uncurtain windows full of light,
Giving to the world in all its starkness
Such splendor as will see it through the night.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/sing17.html. For more Season’s Greetings poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html.

This week’s theme: Season’s Greetings
December 14: Sing of Love, That Graces Every Season

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