Make a Little Time for Public Mourning

 

A Memorial Day poem about the need for a day of public mourning:

 

Make a little time for public mourning,
Easing the harsh pangs of hidden grief.
Maybe ritual tears will bring relief,
Offering a role for one's dark calling.
Remember the utility of sharing,
Inviting cloistered hearts to come outdoors
And dance with us along our barren shores,
Lost within the music of our longing.
Death requires our collaboration
As we render due commemoration,
Yielding sorrow to the common cause.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Nocturne. By Asher Fulero. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/makeal.html. For more Memorial Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/memorialdaypoems.html .

Mai Is Well Aware She Is the Future

 

A psychological poem for Mai about how her identity is shaped by her generation:

 

Mai is well aware she is the future

And much depends upon who she becomes.

If someone took her generation's picture,

Mai knows its beauty would be everyone's.

One is rooted deeply in one's time,

New source of seed and leafmeal for the soil,

The graceful iteration of a rhyme,

Equally a prototype and foil.

Clearly, what each does induces all

Alike to turn, to model, and to change.

Remember that as one we rise and fall,

Lest pride our hearts from our shared selves estrange.

Our choices, all of them, confused or clear,

Sustain a common moral ecosphere.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: No.1 A Minor Waltz. By Esther Abrami. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mai.html. For more psychological poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/psychologicalpoems.html .

Your Love Is like the Arizona Sun

 A Mother’s Day poem from an adult child about the difficulty of expressing their love:  

 

Your love is like the Arizona sun:
Always there, no matter what I do.
Bathed in light, I feel my love for you,
But words are gone before I have begun.
I don't know why I find it hard to say
The things that rest so deeply in my heart.
It seems almost impossible to start,
As though they're too ungainly to display.
I cherish you and what you feel for me.
I'm lucky that I have you for a mom.
I love you with a love that's sweet and calm,
And vast, like some unending inner sea.
You're the one I'm with when I'm alone;
You're the place within my heart that's home.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Heart Strings. By Coyote Hearing. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/arizon.html. For more poems for Mother’s Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html .

 

May

 A calendar poem for May:

 

May is innocent and hot to breed,
Alternately chaste and ruled by need,
Yielding to the wisdom of her seed.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Chords of Harmony. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/may.html. For more calendar poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .

Here Is Neither Here nor There

 

A philosophical poem about the mystery of being:

 

Here is neither here nor there;

Now's eternity.

In every meaning that has meaning,

There is mystery.

 

Nothing is a pseudo-concept:

Nothing can be nothing.

Being, then, must be eternal:

Always, ever, something.

 

How might that be? I have no clue

What it is or how

It came to be. I only know

The miracle of now.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Bike Sharing to Paradise. By Dan Bodan. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/herei5.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

Having Walked the Tight-Lipped Jersey Streets

 

A poem for Easter about suburban life, death, and love:

 

Having walked the tight-lipped Jersey streets,
A house to every inward-turning love,
Peaceful, neat, above all else secure,
Pausing, I am ravished by their beauty.
Years will tell the stories of these streets;
Each house, the joy of its secluded love,
As children come and go, indulged, secure,
Singed or not by life's most awesome beauty.
There is no quarter on these death-strewn streets,
Each house the scene of terror, pain, and love,
Redeemed alone by the passion of its beauty.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Nocturne. By Asher Fulero. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/having.html. For more poems for Easter, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html .

Part of Being Jewish Is a Choice

 

A Passover poem about how each Jew’s participation in Jewish ritual enabled Judaism to survive two thousand years of exile:

 

Part of being Jewish is a choice
As one becomes an act of preservation.
Seders start the stream of admonition,
Stories meant to bind one to the past.
On words alone the exiles had to last,
Verses reified by repetition,
Each an heirloom of a generation
Reared to give those ancient words a voice.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Mysterious Sorrows. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/partof.html. For more Passover poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .