I’m not much of a poem person, but I wrote this a few years ago and felt like pulling it back up today. Maybe it will speak to someone! I’ve reworked it a few times, but the fangs and glory are still intact.

Sloth

Sloth sinks in its sugary teeth
Sweet sounds its swooning bell;
My weary soul slides in too deep
though too asleep to tell.

Eyes cast over, cold and blind
Blink dead as death assails;
Hands stop reaching, pinned astride
Limp as hoping fails.

This path was chosen,
And yet it feels
Like fate has beat its drum;
My will seems frozen,
‘Fore death I kneel—
My foe has bid me come.

But the Lord calls “Rise!
Shake off the web!”
The spell is broken when
I hear the voice—
my cocoon is shed,
By passion born again.

Wriggling loose, I’m bound no more
then stretch my glory wings;
Loathing fear,
I’m born to soar
Conceived for higher things.

—–

This reminds me of far greater verse penned by George MacDonald, a writer-sage who inspired C.S. Lewis in his day (From a book of MacDonald’s sonnets, called “Diary of an Old Soul”:

’Tis hard for man to rouse his spirit up—
It is the human creative agony,
Though but to hold the heart an empty cup,
Or tighten on the team the rigid rein.
Many will rather lie among the slain
Than creep through narrow ways the light to gain—
Than wake the will, and be born bitterly.

But he who would be born again indeed,
Must wake his soul unnumbered times a day,
And urge himself to life with holy greed;
Now ope his bosom to the Wind’s free play;
And now, with patience forceful, hard, lie still,
Submiss and ready to the making will,
Athirst and empty, for God’s breath to fill.