Ice-pick gone, feet first, face down,
Malory slid, clawed at the scree,
Skewed to a halt, humped miles up,
Like a cuttle bone on a beach,
Soiled and white.
Thinning in the thin air,
Toughening to cold stone hardness,
White, but not the white of snow,
The patch on the untrodden slope
Was not the white of snow.
They buried him there with his broken bones,
Taking belongings, the letters,
A box of Swan Vestas,
The same in colour and shape
In our kitchens today.
Change froze on June 24th
When Malory fell,
And somewhere along the col,
The mountain in pursuit,
Irvine stumbled downward.
He knew the night would claim him,
The secret freezing in his head
To weigh the peak against their lives,
Tempted as they no doubt were.
Secret still, the knowledge
Of whether they succeeded, Hard and cold within one found
And one unfound skull.
©Terry Hodgson2024
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