Clearings

This blizzard beguiling

before the mind on a winter’s trek

beyond the harvest steps of the heart’s fall,

struggles to brace against those icy winds

that bear the frozen blasts to the spirit

as they sink the mind into drift of doubt’s frigid face.

 

Amid the cold silence in the season

of hibernation dreams,

how it clings to the thoughts as icicles,

they chill the eyes till all one can see

is a landscape harsh and cruel,

a wilderness that even covers one’s sleep

until all you can do is shiver in the night,

remember the sun and hold onto its warmth

though the day swirling in desolate January despair.

 

In all that trudging where life’s path leads,

there is the guide within that leads ahead,

it is the pioneer residing within

who refuses to surrender to any snowy scenes,

not let that sight deter the willingness

to journey through that glacier terrain

ever holding onto the memory

of the refuges that lay

at the end of the ordeal.

 

And at the moment when it seems

all that lies ahead

is the barren landscape of longing,

some word of encouragement

said by loving lips,

reveals the clearing of hope,

then for one precious second

what numbed from the long labor in passage

becomes reenergized by finally seeing

ahead there really is a place to reach

far from all the time spent alone

on that pilgrimage to discover

the destination of one’s destiny.