Holmes Minor

On alpine holiday, Herr Holmes and I
strayed far from London grime and crime and soot,
to St. Moritz where games concerning skis
skates and sleds were the only ones afoot!

Or maybe not. So wise to Holmes’ ways,
when he proposed I have a late morning,
I didn’t even think of a line-in,
I took it as a definite warning!

Of trouble ahead. I crept from my bed
to put some pre-emptive measures in place
and rose, as I supposed, alone, Holmes-less,
but soon set out, with guide, to track the trace

of creosote, with which I’d doused the blades
of Holmes’ sled-toboggan. By my side,
an animal trained to search and rescue,
and, thus, following the trail, we soon spied

our quarry, flailing in a drift of snow
just off the Cresta Run. Once loose of it,
he unrepentantly cried, ‘The fiend’s gone
and got away, and that’s the deuce of it.”

With tots from the barrel keg, Holmes poured out
the case, then gave my companion a stare;
‘A Saint Bernard is well known to one and all,
but a Saint Okapi, it must be rare.”