I Cannot Tell You How Much I Have Loved You

 

A poem from a parent to an adult child about the beauty of parental love:

I cannot tell you how much I have loved you,
Nor give you an accounting of my joy,
Nor share with you the hopes with which I've held you,
Nor shadow forth the dreams I would employ.
You cannot know the pleasure that you gave me,
Nor grasp the grace in which I've spent my days,
Nor understand the standing that would save me
Whenever darkness met my morning gaze.
You've been to me a moment everlasting,
Though lasting but the moment of us all,
And given me a glimpse of what, in passing,
Must pass for what awaits beyond the wall.
Such love I wish for you as I have known,
But that must come from children of your own.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Audio and Video Music: Forever Yours. By Wayne Jones. Music free to use at YouTube.

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/icann3.html. For more poems to children, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/childrenpoems.html .

Palpably, You Are in This Room

 A Passover poem about the presence of God at the Seder:

 Palpably, You are in this room,
A presence just as certain as our own,
Singing with us -- family friend, well-known --
Someone, not just something we assume.
One can know You only intimately.
Vast as You are, You fit into our home.
Every tick of life we're not alone,
Rejoicing in a love we feel and see.

© by Nicholas Gordon

 Audio and Video Music: Dream of the Ancestor. By Asher Fulero. Music free to use at YouTube.

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

As You Hike Through Public Land

 A poem for Arbor Day about the value of uncut trees:

As you hike through public land
Reserved for public good,
Be aware that public air
Outbids the price of wood.
Remember life is brief, is fragile,
Dangling in a breeze,
As you breathe in oxygen
You owe to uncut trees.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Audio and Video Music: White River. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube.

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/asyouh.html. For more Arbor Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/arbordaypoems.html . 

Estimated Wait Time Is Forever

 

A poem for Eid al-Fitr, which occurs at the end of Ramadan, about faith as a journey rather than a visitation.

Estimated wait time is forever.
In faith, The Moment neither comes nor goes.
Does one dress one's thoughts in what seems clever,
Allowing for a frequent change of clothes?
Let love translate for your timeless soul.
Faith's a journey, not a visitation.
If one would risk a purpose and a role,
Then one should live by love's interpretation,
Rendering each partial person whole.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Audio and Video Music: Wander. By Emmit Fenn. Music free to use at YouTube.

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/estima.html. For more poems for Ramadan, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/ramadanpoems.html .

 THIRTY-FOUR'S DEVOTED TO A DREAM

A Philosophical Number Poem for Someone Who Has Devoted His Life to Social Change

Thirty-four’s devoted to a dream,
Hard at work each day to make it real.
If what-is-not’s not easy to conceive,
Requiring an acolyte to weave
Tapestries that catch its look and feel,
Yet such labors are what make it gleam.

For art must open what faith tends to seal,
Open to make flesh what one believes,
Unafraid to be, and not just mean,
Rich precisely where ideas are lean.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Audio and Video Music: Allégro. By Emmit Fenn. Music free to use at YouTube.

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/34sdev.html. For more poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

Here Are Festive Flowers for Your Room

 An Easter friendship poem about the limits of friendship:

Here are festive flowers for your room,
A spray of springtime on your bare night table:
Placed upon a place within your view,
Placed where best to light your harried heart.
Yet my blossoms can’t dispel your gloom,
Even were they many times more able.
All that gifts from loving friends can do
Sings just one unaccompanied inner part.
The music cannot come from aught but you,
Evangelist beside the empty tomb,
Rejoicing in the grace of life and art.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Forever Yours. By Wayne Jones. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

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

Seventy-Three Suspends Her Animation

Dear Reader,

I have decided to resurrect my former blog, Poem of the Day, as Poem of the Week, publishing each week a different poem from my website, Poems for Free (https://www.poemsforfree.com).

This week, the Poem of the Week is a number poem for a woman who both embraces her feminine role and at the same time dreams of one less self-sacrificing:

Seventy-three suspends her animation,
Eloping for a moment with a dream,
Vividly devouring each sensation,
Each image that means more than it can mean.
Nor can her love reality redeem.
Time moves on, and she comes back to life,
Yearning for the woman in the wife.

The love of husband, children, grandchildren,
Has been a garden long and faithfully tended,
Resulting in a peaceful, well-earned beauty,
Enduring pleasure she would not want ended,
Embrace she chooses out of more than duty.

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/73susp.html. For more poems about feminism, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/feminismpoems.html .