Motionless, I’ve also paused in my tracks
To watch the woods fill up with snow 
The flitting beauty falls to rest in stacks
And this one thing I’ve seen, I know, 

God makes everything beautiful in its time. 

My children laugh like the north wind
Pinked noses exhaling joy in play
In the fresh refrains their voices send,
I remember sorrow is passing away

Reeling in death throes against the night. 

Already the carriage wheels roll the earth
Draped in layers of silken shroud
Carrying our strain and sin from birth
To sink beneath the cold, dark ground

Fresh snow momentarily covers the wake.

The life that rots, the worm that eats,
All these lay buried underneath the vow:
God will never taste defeat;
He is working even now

To restore the purity He made at first.

Push back
Against the screaming, seething dark
Shadows scratching free
In tooth and wail, embark
From the cavernous souls indwelling
A self-perpetuating night
Dealing in energy, trading days
Forcing the flame to open, too bright
Too hot, too attractive
For the moths in fluttering arrays
Who bank their potential
To invest in the day after day after day

Push Back
Against the gravity of the void
Alice ever falling, aware and on task
While madness unmasked is employed
In measured ampoules by
Some ancient apothecary meted
Dissolving under the tongue
Sanity diagnosed and treated
With the ecstasy of reaching too high
Grasping beyond a standard stay
Brighter until the wick surrenders:
Burns outright or fades away

Push Back
Against that inky wave.

My lungs are too heavy to breathe, 
But I pull against the drag
Sucking in this sudden Spring
While winter is here
And winter is coming
I close my eyes
Inhaling the promise
The sun reminds me
Seasons change

I’m not strong enough
But is this beyond the One
Who framed seasons?
Let each breath be Yours
Pick me up, carry me through
So I may hold hands
And sing with these laden lungs
To You.