Above and Below
the Snow.. line
SNOW LEOPARD
he sloughed off her rucksack
and stood stilling her heart,
S
staring fiercely from this last
rise that was her journey's end.
She would take her time now.
Time was what he had given her.
Misted ridges rose like ghosts
towards their tombstone summits.
It was not as she expected so vast, so complex, so bright.
In this stark early light
the range was a wall of white
and blue, snow and shadow
that somewhere held him fast
in a slow echo of his fall
towards the glacier snout.
She would have to face the ficding
of his axe, perhaps, even
his body resurfacing, some
future climbers' reluctant
photograph that would show
his scarf, perhaps, before they
rolled him into a crevasse
and turned towards their summit.
It had happened to others before.
Here it could not end for her.
Even the ice kept moving.
Even this morning she had seen
before sunrise, on the opposite
bank, a white on white shadow
she had not sought, and even now
dare not give a name.
Terry Gifford