Lost Passage Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

The dogs are losing their sense of smell.
They are going blind in the snow glare.

They have drawn the sled
through many avalanches of light.
Now slowly they move down
tracks that wolves have made.

In the clearing, a confusion
of prints. A sheltering cave
lies in a drift of snow.
The tracks go past it.

In the sled a furred
and hooded man stands bowed
in the wind. He holds
his whip stick before him
limply: white in his hand
it taps, taps on the sled’s prow.