Snowbound Poem by Howard Pipe

Their chiselled contours are featureless
when the wind changes,
no cairns to mark their traces,
buried by a falling sky,
entombed in the folds of a raging blizzard,
frozen when the snow lays down its carpet.

Hollow prints scratch the surface,
betraying their stealth, they scurry
naked like the virgin snow,
their cover lost
in the amorphous landscape
where once the shadows grew.

The cruel wind cuts like a knife,
howls like a wolf, relentless,
it whips up a pile of snow
on the path ahead,
then papers over the icy cracks,
wipes the slate clean.