Monkey of the Snow

Nihonzaru waits for the sun, in the valley where steaming pools warm. This is the north, the far north of ice and snow and trembling bones. He will survive as he always does. Thick greying hair, flecked with flakes of snow, protects from frostbite sting. Anxious and fatherly, he browses the breeze with his nose and eyes the surrounds. Pins and needles prickle numbed skin, unrecognized. His family eases in to the lake simmering slowly just off the boil. I tell him he looks like an Eskimo, wrapped up in a woolly parka. Face pink from the bitterly cold. He is tired and wary, but content. happy winter springs cold touch hands on warming hearth; burns like summer sun Snow monkey, throw me a snowball.