Life is short and tedious at best,
a classroom of learning and test:
of how you manage joy, adversity and death.
Do you not know? Life is full of ups and downs,
each opportunity for eternal crown.

And, do you not know? To die is no end!
Why, it's just another path survivors tend:
with good, if you would.
Still, in My Word have you not read,
I spared your beloved dead?

Yes! I spared them...from terrors of these days:
not a terrible price someone pays!
Rather, a chance to mend your ways.
So saith the Lord, "Prepare to pay what is due,
for many are called yet chosen few."

What you saw was not man at all.
So saith the Lord, "Do not fall."

* * * * *

EDITOR'S CHOICE AWARD, The International Library of Poetry, December 2003