Hibernation

He gives the clothes back
to them. They are not really his. He walks back
into the snow — the avalanches — they have broken him
many times. He knows he has to find a way
to pile the snow, to lie across it —
to become the river.
And now he returns to the cave.
He will walk deep enough to paint the sun
on the wall. Where the cave eats,
he will pile the rocks, the fragments
of his wood. After the sun has bled
a thousand days he will be able to open his eyes,
to breathe — to make his fire.


Annie Blake (Victoria)