This has got to be the last of the winter poems, for now. . .

Winter River
By John Herlihy

The winter waterway,
Stopped dead in its tracks.
The current runs far deep,
Movement in stillness now,
Mother Nature holds it back somehow.

Peace drawn from perpetual turmoil,
Seized by the firm hand of winter chill.
Icicles droop from tree limbs now all but still.
A white ribbon ties up tightly the blue land,
A force that nature herself could not withstand.

The river could no longer even recognize itself.
Vague shadows lay quietly under the trees,
Ill-defined shapes kneel devoutly on their knees.
The descending heavens in the East appear Bible-black,
As darkness gathers momentum from its nighttime sack.

And there, in the distance, what I didn’t want to see
Indeed night was approaching on panther paws
The cold dug deep with its sharp winter claws
Suddenly there was heard an ominous howl
Silence held its breath, its face now a scowl

A river named fear now surged within me,
Urging me with its own violence to move on.
The darkness descended quickly now,
With its steel shutter of absolute night.
The sound of silence echoes its own fright.

My heart pounded hard inside its cage,
Brief spaces between the beats defying my age.
While I, alone and adrift in this vast wilderness,
Beheld a flickering light with some insistence,
Offering the harsh night oh so little resistance.

A candle in a cottage window,
Nestled snugly on the back of the frozen river.
While I, once lost now found, in the winter landscape,
As frightened as I, in my life, have ever been.
Did I recall the Lord? I couldn’t remember if or when.