http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/snow-monkey-mother-jigokudani/
Deep in the ever-snow
At the tree-line’s very top
Lives a mother and a grandmother
A leader and a healer
And each is one in the same
Snow monkeys avoid the reputation
Of their thieving and mischievous kin
They are a quiet sort
Who prefer solitude to crowds
Contemplation to action
And health to sickness

The mother and grandmother
Leader and healer
Learned of her ability in tragedy
After too many deaths
In her family
And in those that shared
The ever-snow with her progeny

A sick youth was brought to her
Its fur matted to its skin
It’s lifeline brittle and thin
And a clue tucked away
That she was first to see and grasp

She saw only as she could see
Pulled at the black body of disease
And the long thread of death
That followed with it
And she showed the youth’s mother
The sinister culprit
But the mother could not see
As the leader and healer could see

She pulled at these threads
Of death and disease
At the threads of doom
Spun in some unseen, unknown loom
And discarded them in the snow
For years, she could not leave
And would not go
So she pulled at the black threads
The strings of dark and dread
And never learned who
Had let these lines of terror
Quietly pass through

The more she pulled
The more she lived
And she would not stop
Would not cede
To these threads of doom
And wondered if her own death
Would come as a black thread
That would find her too soon