Winter (2010)

Winter, you seem to choke my very breath
With chills and frost and bitter, bitter ice.
You, the very shadow of death, proceed
Across a land that languishes for song;
The forests are silent, the cities silent too,
The fields that once abounded now are still.

This muteness presses down upon the world
And sings a foreboding music all its own:
Biting the bark of barren shrubs and trees,
A cry on the mourning wind that passes by,
A dirge that tells the weeping and the moans
Of those who must endure and carry on.

Through all of time you’ve whined your bleak lament
And pressed your arctic hand upon our hearts,
Reminding us of our thin mortality,
As if you wished to freeze our very souls
And smother out eternally the stuff
Of happiness – an unseen, inner death.

All creatures tremble to pass beneath your rod,
Your glacial rule that overruns the earth;
But there is a fire that you can never staunch,
For love cannot despair, nor faith, nor hope,
Which know, despite your shadow and your song,
That your hand will lift with the melting of the snow.­