Dawn
by P.H. Wise

Dawn breaks with a baby’s cry
Her first breath drawn through frantic lungs
And like water rising from a mountain spring,
Joy wells up from those dim, dark depths
A cold, wondrous shock to wake my slumb’ring heart:
I am an Uncle.

Oh God! Protect and keep this little one!
Evil is so evil, that goodness seems a fantasy;
Goodness is so good, that evil seems a joke.
Yet like a spring flower blooming in an icy field,
My heart wakes from winter’s grasp
And all the world’s renewed.