How Many Times You Almost Lost Your Way

May 24, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week in honor of the many college graduations taking place this month is graduation.

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

A graduation poem comparing a student to a rat in a maze:

How many times you almost lost your way,

About to leave the maze in pure frustration,

Indignant at extrinsic motivation,

Learning not enough to want to stay …

The rat must sometimes hate the proffered cheese,

Open to the eye but not the tongue,

The prize that makes him learn which colored rung

Has the power his torturers to please.

Even so, so much that you have learned

(Granted not the whole, but some good part)

Resonates within the mind and heart,

A legacy that now you've fully earned.

Drab though some of life may yet still prove,

Unbind those restive dreams that you employ!

All roads, no matter whither, lead to joy,

Though none will take you there unless you love.

Each maze becomes a garden when you love.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/howman.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

5/21: Congratulations on Your Doctorate

5/22: Graduates Are People with Degrees

5/23: Happiness Does Not Depend on Weather

5/24: How Many Times You Almost Lost Your Way

Happiness Does Not Depend on Weather

May 23, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week in honor of the many college graduations taking place this month is graduation.

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

A graduation poem about joy through good and bad weather:

Happiness does not depend on weather,

Although it sometimes helps to see the sun.

Perhaps one finds one’s best landscape within,

Precisely where one's labor is one's joy.

Yearning finds fulfillment in compassion.

Given the uncertainties of weather,

Rain and night in league against the sun,

All must find their happiness within,

Depending on their love of life for joy,

United by the bonds of their compassion.

And all should value knowledge, regardless whether

Their learning gives them more sweet days of sun.

In knowledge there’s a brighter sun within,

Opening one’s heart and mind to joy,

Necessary cradle of compassion.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/happ22.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

5/21: Congratulations on Your Doctorate

5/22: Graduates Are People with Degrees

5/23: Happiness Does Not Depend on Weather

Graduates Are People with Degrees

May 22, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week in honor of the many college graduations taking place this month is graduation.

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

A graduation poem about the real value of an education:

Graduates are people with degrees,

Rewarded with some letters by their names.

An education must be more than these.

Doubtful bosses aren't playing games.

Unless you know the things you need to know,

And have a mind honed well by what you've learned,

The piece of paper might as well be snow –

It is the least of what you here have earned.

Of what value have these hard years been?

Now that depends on how much you put in.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/grad10.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

5/21: Congratulations on Your Doctorate

5/22: Graduates Are People with Degrees

Congratulations on Your Doctorate

May 21, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week in honor of the many college graduations taking place this month is graduation.

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

A graduation poem about the difficulties and rewards of earning a doctorate:

Congratulations on your doctorate!

One must not only dare, but persevere,

Not giving in to stress, fatigue, or fear,

Grinding out the hours obdurate.

Rewards, we hope, will be commensurate:

A passionate and interesting career;

The joy of making truth a bit more clear,

Unafraid to speak your mind on it.

Let your happiness for now take wing

As you rest on the mountaintop awhile,

The victor in your struggle with yourself.

In time, of course, the world will cease to sing.

One must at length that piece of paper file,

No less basking in one’s inner smile,

Still savoring one’s well-earned inner wealth.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/congr5.html. For more graduation poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation

5/21: Congratulations on Your Doctorate

Forty-Six3

May 20, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A number poem in which one is the instrument of God’s music:

Forty-six takes pleasure in the act

Of being, as each moment sings of joy.

Regardless of the certainty of death,

There's beauty in the light that spirits buoy,

Yielding truths one need not take for fact.

So does one live within the house of breath,

Instrument of what none can destroy,

Xylophone among the bric-a-brac.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/46c.html. For more poems about religion, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/religiouspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well

5/17: If Reason Is the Word, Faith’s the Music

5/18: Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages

5/19: Little Do the Others Know

5/20: Forty-Six3

Little Do the Others Know

May 19, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A religious poem in which the poet speaks to God about the merciless nature of truth:

Little do the others know

How much I hurt inside.

But you, who must know everything,

Care little for my pride.

You, with eyes of steel, rebut

Without a word my pain,

And with a passion pitiless

Undo me once again.

The truth is ever loving, though

It recks not how we feel.

And you, who are the truth, love me

Too much to let me heal.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/littl2.html. For more poems about religion, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/religiouspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well

5/17: If Reason Is the Word, Faith’s the Music

5/18: Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages

5/19: Little Do the Others Know

Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages

May 18, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is spirituality, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16^th.

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

A number poem about the eternal nature of the soul:

Souls seem to stay the same; the body ages.

In time we change, though somehow souls remain

X’s anchored deep beneath the sea,

The bobbing buoys that lean and shift and sway,

Yet mark their place as life goes through its stages.

For throughout our joy, guilt, ecstasy, and pain;

In spite of all the love along the way;

Vivid though our passions, prayers, and rages;

Each soul still sojourns in eternity.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/soulss.html. For more poems about religion, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/religiouspoems.html .

This week’s theme: Spirituality

5/14: Time Passes like a Stream in Which One Stands

5/15: Alyssa

5/16: Reason Doesn’t Travel Well

5/17: If Reason Is the Word, Faith’s the Music

5/18: Souls Seem to Stay the Same; the Body Ages