The Ice Always Comes

In wintry light
With crisis nigh;
I walk among
A wintry cry.

Heavy ice breaks
Each branch and leaf;
Revealing nature's
Inner grief.

A sea of trees
To navigate;
With broken limbs
To investigate.

Skying trunks once
Tall and proud;
Newly sheared of
Healthy shroud.

Overnight came
Winter's wrath;
An unsuspected
Icy bath.

Living trees reveal
Eternal souls;
Now most stand broken
Though some stayed whole.

My frigid hand sifts
Through devestation;
Laid bare before me
All prevarication.

In summer's sun
When all was well;
Who did suspect
This coming hell?


Who had inner eyes
To see inner rot?
Was bark's veneer
All nature wrought?

But when the times
Turned cold and colder;
And mosses dried
Upon the boulder;

Dreams of greenery
Disappeared;
Relentless ice brought
Fates most feared.

Piled limbs and brittle trunks
Stretch across the miles;
Rare the tree both firm and free
Who'd survived this icy trial.

Such doom and wreckage
Reeked of blunder;
God's nature beauty
Ripped asunder.

Ancient children
These holy trees;
No more to feel
Spring's warm breeze.

I burned the branches
Of no tomorrow;
Raging against
The needless sorrow.

Raising my eyes to the sky:
"From where did this hell come?"
T'was then I did remember:
The ice, it always comes.