I’ve read the freshly fallen snow
Frosts the world as a wedding cake,
Smooth and crisp, sweet to know 
The world in pure and pristine flake
Yet my children don their war attire 
And carve out channels fit to pass
They chop and dig, stacking ever higher
All the snow they may amass
With buckets leftover from sandy days
They shape their castle walls
Pouring their work into their play
Grappling and clambering, their falls
Are buried in the foundation
Of the spectacles they build
The feats of effort and imagination
A marriage of fantasy and will.

If I should have to choose between
Untouched snow or their forged civilizations,
I’m forever grateful I have seen
All their passing, perfect creations-

Their evanescent ecosystems
Of icy delights.

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.