The snow arrived without a sound,
A white confession from the sky.
It covered every broken path,
As though no soul had passed nearby.
Beyond the hill, the dark woods stood,
Their ancient branches cold and bare.
They whispered secrets to the wind,
Of vanished footsteps lingering there.
I walked beneath their shadowed arms,
Where daylight dared not fully stay.
The silence gathered like a cloak
And gently stole my fear away.
The trees remembered every name
That winter carried to the ground.
Each frozen leaf, each fallen branch,
Held echoes no one else had found.
Death was not a hunter there,
Nor dressed in terror, black, or flame.
It wandered like the drifting snow,
Too quiet to announce its name.
It touched the river into glass,
It crowned the hills with silver light.
It closed the eyes of fading stars
And folded evening into night.
I did not run from what I felt;
The woods were neither cruel nor kind.
They simply kept what time had lost,
Leaving only peace behind.
When dawn at last embraced the earth,
The forest wore a softer shade.
The snow still fell, the wind still sang,
Yet none of me was left afraid.
For every path must disappear
Where winter writes its final breath.
And every flake that meets the ground
Reminds us of the grace of death.
The poet is a postgraduate student, LUT University, Finland
