THE HOPE THAT WALKS THROUGH THE DARK A Poem

The winds move softly through the willow trees, brushing their long green fingers against the hush of evening.

Sounds of silence gather in the hollow places, where the earth seems to breathe slower, as if listening for something ancient and near.

Darkness comes, not in haste but in weight, like a thick fog settling over fields and forgotten roads, wrapping the world in its patient quiet.

And I walk within it, a small traveler beneath vast skies, feeling the tremble of longing in every leaf and every shadow.

Yet even here, even now, there is a stirring beneath the stillness.

A light not born of the sun, nor borrowed from the moon, but rising from deeper than night itself.

It moves like breath returning to a weary soul, like dawn remembering its promise before the horizon knows it.

Christ, the living hope, unseen yet near, speaks without noise, and the silence becomes not emptiness but waiting.

The darkness does not erase Him; it only reveals how greatly light is desired.

So I do not despair in the fog nor surrender to the long night, for hope walks with me in unseen footsteps.

The willow bends, but it does not break, and neither does the heart that has heard the voice of mercy calling it home.

And I know this: that every shadow is only temporary, every silence only a pause, every night only a canvas for morning.

And Christ remains, steady as eternity, the hope that outlives the dark, the light that finds me even when I cannot find the way.

BDD