Sometimes

I

In the darkness of the valley
A golden smudge of tender light
My beacon
A beacon almost out of sight:
A taper guiding in the gale
This narrow trail
Of craggy rocks around your boots:
A strain your balance to maintain
Over the roots
Of dry-soil-trees unearthed by rain,
That threaten him who overshoots
This narrowness of mountain pass
===
Without the saving grace of grass.

II

Daybreak takes an age today
As rainclouds block the light.
The hazards of the path increase:
Fallen branches bar the way
To make one slip and slide.
This truly is a knees-up dance
To sap our strength,
With underfoot untried,
Resulting in a slow advance
Before we will arrive at length.

III

You stumbled in the morning light,
You fell down flat and closed your eyes;
You lay there, while the past replayed
The pain of many steps of fear,
Whose tortures still repeat your sighs,
Still play their games in masquerade.
And when all the world came back
And the light infused itself around,
And you were touched by precious sound,
You pictured what would be the scene
Such as the scene had never known;
You sat up straight right then and there
And shook the needles from your hair
As if your fall had never been
Or like your confidence had grown.

IV

Her soul stretched tight from noon to night
When shivering hardly ever stops,
Her hands are cold, as are are feet
The temperature just drops and drops;
And there's the thought of frozen pipes,
And all new blossoms died from blight
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a balance sheet:
The overused and wasted world.

It's us whose fear is now unfurled
By knowledge and remorse too late
We knew it all so long ago
but thought we'd outwit fate.

Just raise your glass and make believe
Our planet Earth is so robust
That in our Lord we trust.