A snow storm rages across the lands
A blizzard in hues of whites and blues
No life can survive this storm’s rough hands
Gripping and tearing – shredding – all within view
Barren and cold lie miles of death
As far as the eye can see, then that much more
Impossible to encompass the very breadth
Of vitality once felt, and loved, now deplored

The storm rages on ‘round a fortress made of steel
Forged and cast in Hell, each brick carefully laid
Bells toll an eternity in melancholy peals
Giving voice to all things dead – unswayed
No windows cut, no doors lead in or out
Walls a’bastioned scrape the bruised, black sky
Around each tower, wraithlike clouds writhe about
As the solitary clogs of time clunk slowly by

Breaking through the clouds with a deafening roar
Shines a beam of light to rival a hundred suns
Its warmth spreading, caressing – melting the storm
A spring-like breeze healing all hurt – all shunned
Walls a’ bastioned come crashing to the ground
Through clearing dust, center-most, can be seen a hole
In the earth that holds a heart now unbound
Because you reached out tenderly – and touched my soul.