How Will I Know Which Way to Go

April 16, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is aging: the changes in perspective, health, wisdom, and satisfaction.

Today’s poem is about how aging can help answer some ultimate questions.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

How will I know which way to go,

Which way to go, which way to go?

When I go which way I will

And, lost, bow to the wind.

How will I know the reason why,

The reason why, the reason why?

When death unrolls the tapestry

And I see well its grace.

How will I know my time has come,

My time has come, my time has come?

When the melody is gone

And my good friends are home.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/howwill.html. For more philosophical poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Aging.

April 11: Seventy-Four

April 12: Adages of Age

April 13: Sixty-Five

April 14: Melissa

April 15: Seventy-Two

April 16: How Will I Know Which Way to Go

Seventy-Two3

April 15, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is aging: the changes in perspective, health, wisdom, and satisfaction.

Today’s poem is a number poem for a 72-year-old poet.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Seventy-two is lucky to be alive.

Each day's a gift, although he knows no giver.

Very grateful to whatever might

Elect to keep him at the edge of night,

Now, this day, again he would endeavor

To get the beauty of the moment right,

Yearning with the joy of those who strive.

Take from him what grace he might deliver,

Whatever words might seem a source of light,

Of which a few he dares hope might survive.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/72c.html. For more number poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Aging.

April 11: Seventy-Four

April 12: Adages of Age

April 13: Sixty-Five

April 14: Melissa

April 15: Seventy-Two

Melissa

April 14, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is aging: the changes in perspective, health, wisdom, and satisfaction.

Today’s poem is a name poem for a woman entering the early evening of her life gracefully.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Melissa seems made for summer afternoons:

Evening waits as she walks in the long light,

Leaving us open to the honey sun.

Intent on ecstasy, she murmurs tunes

Supple and wild as she flits left and right,

Singing unknowing as she dances towards night,

Adrift in our need, her long white hair undone.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/meliss.html. For more name poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/namepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Aging.

April 11: Seventy-Four

April 12: Adages of Age

April 13: Sixty-Five

April 14: Melissa

Sixty-Five3

April 13, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is aging: the changes in perspective, health, wisdom, and satisfaction.

Today’s poem is a number poem for a singer/songwriter who has reached the age of 65.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Sixty-five suspends her animation,

Immersed within a wistful melody.

Xylophones accompany her song,

The wave of wonder rising from her sea,

Yearning overwhelming all sensation.

For her the past is neither right nor wrong.

Instead it is the soil for her creation,

Vast fields of darkness sown by memory,

Ever yielding tunes she must pass on.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/65c.html. For more number poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Aging.

April 11: Seventy-Four

April 12: Adages of Age

April 13: Sixty-Five

Adages of Age

April 12, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is aging: the changes in perspective, health, wisdom, and satisfaction.

Today’s poem is a set of proverbs from the perspective of old age.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

ADAGES OF AGE

--In the morning there is hope; in the afternoon, fulfillment; in the evening, memory; at night, peace.

--Free choice is destiny without a crystal ball.

--Like water, quality seeks its own level.

--Boredom is the result of insufficient attention to detail.

--Every moment of life is a moment of unperceived ecstasy.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/adage.html. For more proverbs, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/proverbs.html .

This week’s theme: Aging.

April 11: Seventy-Four

April 12: Adages of Age

Seventy-Four

April 11, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is aging: the changes in perspective, health, wisdom, and satisfaction.

Today’s poem is a number poem about the change in perspective that comes with reaching 74.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Seventy-four savors his sweet time.

Each day is more a gift than was the last.

Vested less in things he has to do,

Even though he still has quite a few,

Now he sometimes lingers in the past,

Taking in the music of a vast

Yearning that no memory can define.

Fortune is now more a windward view

On which he looks nostalgically, a sign

Unquestionable that he has crossed a line,

Reaching back for what he once reached to.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/74.html. For more number poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Aging.

April 11: Seventy-Four

Thirty-Three4

April 10, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is friendship.

Today’s poem is a number poem for a woman who is good friends with herself.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Thirty-three is OK on her own,

Having found a bit of peace alone.

In love and friendship she prefers some space,

Returning happily to her own place,

The sanctum that her clarity confirms.

Yet she mingles well on her own terms.

To be alone does not mean to be lonely.

Happiness does not come coupled only.

Reveling in the simple fact she's free,

Each day she's with a friend whom she calls “me,”

Even as time tugs at her heart, though gently.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/33d.html. For more number poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/numberpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Friendship.

April 4: I Don’t Want You to Think that You Must Do

April 5: Sixty-Five

April 6: For Most of Us Life Passes like a Dream

April 7: Courtney

April 8: I Don’t Understand What Happened to Us

April 9: May Our Friendship Last Forever

April 10: Thirty-Three