The Leeches

We waded through the creek a dozen times,
and forced our way through briars and blackberry
canes, waist-deep in vines while bracken scratched
our shins, and moisture seeped from every stone
and tree. We were lost, as far as I could see.
Birds mocked our progress with their knowing chimes.
We came to an impenetrable patch
of staghorn ferns and logs. I felt alone

as never before — my two companions
forged ahead impatiently, turning
now to climb out of the valley. One was
a fair-haired youth with a countenance
of such sweetness that it seemed as if burning
within him were the halo and pinions
worn by Renaissance angels; the other's
eyebrows glowered with every utterance,

sardonic and aquiline and secretly
menacing. When I mentioned my concern,
as we rested, his eyes slanted with mirth,
and he merely replied, ‘There's no going back,
now.' A ledge of ice beneath a tree-fern's
shade appeared at first as a perfectly
formed fungal growth, a wedge of sky the earth
had trapped, or a signpost on a track:

it meant we were ascending to the snowline.
Soon there were quilts and counterpanes of white
scattered throughout the slanting woods, before
we reached the stage where undergrowth had been
cancelled by deep layers of frozen light.
The low clouds were reflected in a dull shine,
while we sank thigh-deep at each step, numbed, sore,
exhausted, and fearful as well, though the scene

was one of laundered purity. Our sole hope,
the blond youth calmly explained, was to reach
a hut which was shown on the map; the ridge
we were climbing should take us to it. But the hours
were passing, and dusk had begun to leach
the daylight away. The snow-covered slope
should have been leading up to the forest's edge,
where icicles bloomed like jagged flowers,

and night would surely fall before we came to the hut.
The walk's exertions had left me drained
and weak; the other two had gone ahead.
People lost in the snow, bone-numbed and tired,
are tempted to lie down, we had all been trained
to know, on the ground's billowing softness, but
that is a sleep no-one wakes from, a bed
which becomes a grave. Struggling uphill while mired

in the quicksand-like suction of the drifts,
the temptation came to me. I knew then
death could win, if we did not find
the shelter promised at day's end. Darkness
fell, and the clean snow became fluorescent
in the moonlight, lending tree-stumps and rock-clefts
an air of sacredness which clearly defined
our plight. Or was it mine alone? Unless

that demonic pair came back, my fading strength
was almost at an end. And yet it seemed
unlikely that they would; it was apparent
that they had a plan, one which excluded
me. The half-light in the forest gleamed.
Out of my chilled extremity, at length,
the thought of praying came: as to a parent,
I begged that the hut might be extruded

out of the mist and snow. Most prayers,
it is said, remain unanswered, but who can prove
this means they are unheard? There are others
who believe that those requests are granted
which are made with a whole heart, above
all those unqualified by the doubt that theirs
is less than justified. Like seagull feathers,
the snowflakes swirled around; some became planted

in my hair. The emptiness felt stranger
than a dream: except for the deep footprints
I was slowly following, there were no signs
of life; only the snowgums, their scribbled
bark and flesh-like stooping limbs, gave hints
of respiration. A pit of hunger
yawned somewhere. In my mind the recited lines
from the prayer book nourished like nibbled

crumbs, but they were all I had. Still, my pleas
continued, until, to my amazement,
the hut appeared, its smoked-glass window
glowing with kerosene light. My two friends
were at work already, by the hearth, bent
over the beginnings of a fire, knees
crooked as if to say the prayers they couldn't know
had filled my mind. So it all ends

well, I thought. Huddled together, we peeled
off our socks beside the warmth, and found
clinging to my shins a row of blood-fattened
leeches, which must have been there since morning,
when we were walking on the fern-dank ground
of the valley. My feebleness thus revealed
an unseen bodily cause: what had happened
was that my life-blood had been drained. A burning

match was touched to each of the slime-skinned
black creatures; as they fell away blood ran
down my legs as though from the stigmata
on the cross, for leeches have saliva
which interferes with clotting. A can
of soup was heating on the coals. The wind
moaned outside, but we were safe. A martyr
no more, I preferred being a survivor,

but my deliverance faded from mind
as the logs among the petal-scarlet flames
dissolved into snow-pale embers. Dry clothing
and a warm sleeping bag, the steaming food
beneath an iron roof, the long day's aims
fulfilled; how soon we can be blind
to mystery. The walls seemed to be breathing.
My bare shins still wore streaks of dried-up blood.