Slowly and steadily, yellow, red, brown, In the clear autumn sunlight, the leaves clicked down, Circled and drifted, yellow, brown, red, And clicked against the canvas that had sheltered his bed. Day followed day and autumn drifted past. In the early winter storms the tent held fast. Snow swirled over and snow silted in Across the board floor where his bare feet had been. Bleached by the sun and rotted by the rain, Fifty times frozen and thawed again, Taut in the rain and slackened in the sun, The guy ropes parted, one after one. One wild winter night, with a great roaring rent, The wind burst the roof. The whole thing went Over in the snow. Would you know it for a tent, This wreck of rope and canvas that the spring sun lifts From the soiled shrinking snow of rotten March drifts? Could you believe that this gray heap had Given safe summer shelter to a little bronzed lad? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER TU FU (THEY SAY YOU'RE STAYING IN A MOUNTAIN TEMPLE) by MARVIN BELL CONTRA MORTEM: THE GREAT DEATH by HAYDEN CARRUTH SONG: SO OFTEN, SO LONG I HAVE THOUGHT by HAYDEN CARRUTH INDEPENDENCE DAY, 1956, A FAIRY TALE by JAMES GALVIN FRANCIS II, KING OF NAPLES; SONNET by AMY LOWELL |