Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

November 22, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem is about gratitude to God for the gift of being.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Gratitude, like love, is part of being,

Remaining when all else is left behind,

Absurd and yet quite natural, a yearning

To give to light the worship of the wind.

In gratitude we find a gift worth giving

To something that no gift can serve at all,

Understanding that the gift of living

Depends upon some will beyond the wall,

Eliciting our gratitude and awe.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift of Understanding

November 22: Gratitude, like Love, Is Part of Being

Thank You for the Gift of Understanding2

November 21, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is gratitude, in honor of Thanksgiving, which falls on November 24.

Today’s poem thanks God for allowing us to understand how little we understand.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

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

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/than47.html . For more poems about gratitude, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/thanksgivingpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Gratitude.

November 21: Thank You for the Gift ofUnderstanding

Logan

November 20, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is a name poem about enjoying the beauty of nature.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Logan loves the laurel in the glen.

Often when it blooms he wanders there,

Grace bursting in his heart, the urge to share

Alight with all the wonderment within,

Now lost in Eden, free from pain and sin.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

November 17: Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

November 18: I Wanted Nothing Less than Hope

November 19: Fifty-Four

November 20: Logan

Fifty-Four4

November 19, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is a number poem about an artist’s motivation.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Fifty-four returns life's many favors.

Into what she does she pours her heart.

Fortune will reward the work one savors,

The roles where love of beauty spurs one's labors,

Yearning that must underlie all art.

Feeling is a shape, a tone, a color,

Out of which in time will come a whole.

Underneath all being is the Other,

Returning to whom is the artist's goal.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/54d.html . For more poems about beauty, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

November 17: Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

November 18: I Wanted Nothing Less than Hope

November 19: Fifty-Four

I Wanted Nothing Less than Hope

November 18, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is about why artists sometimes seem attracted to ugliness.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I wanted nothing less than hope,

But, relishing despair,

I plunged into the nearest hell

And spent some weekends there.

I saw no answers on the walls,

No rebirth in the rain,

No saving grace in suffering,

No rapture born of pain.

What held me there? It must have been

The jackal, crazed and lean,

Who took my face between his paws

And, hungry, picked it clean.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

November 17: Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

November 18: I Wanted Nothing Less than Hope

Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

November 17, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is a humorous number poem to a conductor of youth orchestras.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Flutes are doubled by the violins.

Organ tones are held by brass and basses.

Racing madly, the inner strings and winds

Try with all their might to keep their places.

Yet the brass blare hides a multitude of sins.

The conductor waves his arms while making faces,

Wincing as one errant oboe wins,

Out of step as the next mad dash begins.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

November 17: Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

By the Tulips

November 16, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is about the beauty of people in a garden.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

By the tulips people stop to take

Pictures. One wonders which are more

Beautiful: the people or the tulips?

Lush, almost flourescent, like cups,

Like vases, like wet crimson towels

Hanging loose about the naked style.

Or an Annamese girl in striped mini

Just below her drawers, on her forehead

A pale red moon. Or two Indian women

In brilliant prints and gold nose pellets,

Nipples pressing through silk. Or an old

Man with his mother, identical blue chips

Glinting through corrugated skin. Families

Like flower beds, varieties of love

And anguish, phenotype and genotype,

And Babel, magnificent garden!

Or the glory of laughter, that needs

No language, the glee of children racing

Away, the silence of tulips calling

Wildly, pouring out love in perfume.

© by Nicholas Gordon

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

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips