How Beautiful the Turning of the Year

 

A New Year’s poem about the artificial beauty of the border between one year and the next:

 

How beautiful the turning of the year!
A moment artificial yet profound:
Point upon an arbitrary chart
Passing like a breath upon the heart,
Yearning with anticipation wound,
New hope new harbored in old-fashioned cheer.
Even when the boundary line is clear,
We recognize the oneness of the ground.
Years, like circles, do not end or start
Except we lay across their truth our art,
Adjusting dates as they go round and round
Revolving to a tune long sung and dear.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

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

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/howbea.html. For more poems for the new year, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/newyearsdaypoems.html .

Make Time, Make Time to Listen to Your Heart

 

A Christmas poem about the benefits of putting reason away for the holiday:

 

Make time, make time to listen to your heart!
Empty out your thoughts and then just listen!
Reason can't compete with faith and art.
Resist it! It will go into remission.
Yes, listen to the arguments of grace,
Clarifying mysteries no word
Has ever plumbed: the source of time and space,
Reality, Being, you, me -- all absurd.
If everything is equally a miracle,
Sing carols on a cold, crisp winter night,
Taking on the inexplicable,
Making it as lyrical as light.
Although your reason may not wish to stay,
Sing with the angels! Sing! It's Christmas Day!

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: The Beauty of Love. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/maketi.html. For more Christmas poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/xmaschristmaspoems.html .

Given That There Is No Explanation

 

A Chanukah poem about how Creation is equally a mystery to those who turn to reason or faith for an explanation:

 

Given that there is no explanation,

And that the provenance of the Creation,

Belief or no, remains a mystery,

Regarding how the whole thing came to be,

It makes no sense to squander sense on it.

Enjoy the candles, and when the last one's lit,

Love their loveliness, however lit.

 

Even so, one seeks an explanation:

Like one for Being, though there's none for it;

Like one for the creation of Creation,

Eternal Being bringing all to be.

Nor would no cause be less a mystery.

 

So faith and reason end in mystery,

Equally ignorant of what lit

The light from which all beings came to be,

Having no conclusive explanation

As to the existence of Creation,

Nor hint of what might be the cause of it,

Despite the tangibility of it.

Even so, the veil of mystery

Leads one to imagine the Creation,

Inventing how and why the void was lit,

Zealous for an ethical explanation,

A myth that makes love be the cause of be.

 

But one need not believe a myth to be

Open to the loveliness of it,

Nor need a theological explanation,

Nor care to solve a meta-mystery.

It might have been a miracle that lit

Eight days the lamps, as some say at Creation

A voice out of the void called forth Creation,

Needing out of love for us to be,

Demanding out of love our souls be lit,

Choosing not to be alone. It

Acts as fair use of a mystery,

Repurposing the role of explanation,

Making explanations of Creation

Exquisite art, that mystery might be

Not claimed by faith, but by the lamps it lit.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

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

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/given4.html. For more Chanukah poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chanukahpoems.html .

December Finds Himself Again a Child

 

A calendar poem for December:

 

December finds himself again a child
Even as he undergoes his age.
Cold and early darkness now descend,
Embracing sanctuaries of delight.
More and more he stares into the night,
Becoming less and less concerned with ends,
Emblem of the innocent as sage
Restored to wonder by what he must yield.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Please. By Wayne Jones. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

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

Sing of the Annual Cavalcade of Seasons

 

A Season’s Greetings poem about how the tilt of the Earth’s axis affects so many aspects of our lives:

Sing of the annual cavalcade of seasons,
Each passing through the portals of the heart,
A slow parade of brightly colored passions
Swirling round and round the rimless dark!
One sings in harmony with what one hears,
Now consonant, now dissonant, yet ever
Seasonal, as the ponderous pageant turns
Gracefully from one year to another.
Remember that a cosmic accident,
Earth’s tilted axis vis-à-vis its sun,
Ever shapes the heart’s environment,
The music that pervades the songs within.
In every thought and feeling, every pleasure,
Need, desire, pain, regret, perception,
Granted that free choice seems in one’s power,
Sing what you alone could not have written.

 © by Nicholas Gordon

 Audio and Video Music: Borderless. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/sing23.html. For more Season’s Greetings poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/seasonsgreetingspoems.html .

Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

 

A Thanksgiving poem thanking God for the gift of understanding how little we can understand:

 

Thank you for the gift of understanding
How little one can hope to understand.
A universe is all we have at hand,
Nothing too confusing or demanding.
Knowledge is like spindrift on the sea
Sitting on the surface of a wave.
Granted one can know how things behave,
Ill-formed to know how they might come to be.
Vast Your Being, beyond imagination!
Immeasurable, of neither shape nor size.
Nor ought one lose one's sense of adoration,
Gift equal to the gifts of mind and eyes.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Allemande. By Wahneta Meixsell. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/than47.html. For more Thanksgiving poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/thanksgivingpoems.html .

From Teachers, There Is Much That One Can Learn

 

A poem about the teaching profession:

 

From teachers, there is much that one can learn.
One ought not judge their worth by what they earn.
Rather, it's the task one should judge by:
To teach not only what, but how and why,
Yielding goods no teacher's pay could buy.

Even though teaching's a profession,
In fact, it is for many a vocation,
Given the knowledge and the expertise,
Having earned the requisite degrees
To touch the soul of each new generation.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

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

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/fromte.html. For more poems about professions, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/professionspoems.html .