Manitoba Childe Roland / Carl Sandburg

Lomen Bros., Dogsled team, Nome, Alaska, 1910. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Manitoba Childe Roland

Last night a January wind was ripping at the shingles
    over our house and whistling a wolf song under the
    eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl
    the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark
    Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was
    beautiful to her and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and
    nothing happens — and he goes on and on — and it's
    all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on — and nothing happens — and he
    comes on a horse's skull, dry bones of a dead horse —
    and you know more than ever it's all lonesome and
    empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows — he
    fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the empty
    sky and the empty land--and blows one last wonder-
    cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks
    off its results willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick
    of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimetre
    projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts
    of Manitoba and Minnesota — in the sled derby run
    from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg —
    the lead dog is eaten by four team mates — and the
    man goes on and on — running while the other racers
    ride, running while the other racers sleep —

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle
    of travel hour after hour — fighting the dogs who
    dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep —
    pushing on — running and walking five hundred
    miles to the end of the race — almost a winner — one
    toe frozen, feet blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the North-
    west meet him in the finishing miles and yell cheers
    — I know why judges of the race call him a winner
    and give him a special prize even though he is a
    loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding
    heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles that
    one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland — and I told
    the six year old girl about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles
    and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes
    had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful
    to her and she could not understand.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Corhhuskers, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Carl Sandburg biography

"Manitoba Childe Roland" read by The Voice before the Void.

Doggerel / George J. Dance

Doggerel

The happy dogs that frolic in the park
may run, and jump, and gambol playfully,
but all dogs when they spy a likely tree
must lift a nether leg and leave a mark.
Some dogs must growl at every bird and frog,
and some must leave their stools upon the street,
and some must bark at every other dog,
and some must snap at every poor man's feet.
A man who's being dogged must learn to fight,
to put the boots to any mangy cur
that's troubled by the fleas amidst its fur
and make the mongrel yowl! Then doggie might
run off to find a more defenceless bone
and leave the weary traveller alone.

~~
George J. Dance, 2007
from Doggerel, and other doggerel, 2015.

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography 

 

Peter Wadsworth, American Foxhound and black Labrador Retriever playing with stick, 2007. 

CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Summer Evening / Walter de la Mare

Summer Evening

The sandy cat by the Farmer's chair
Mews at his knee for dainty fare;
Old Rover in his moss-greened house
Mumbles a bone, and barks at a mouse
In the dewy fields the cattle lie
Chewing the cud 'neath a fading sky
Dobbin at manger pulls his hay:
Gone is another summer's day.

~~~
Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
from Peacock Pie, 1913

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Walter de la Mare biography

"Summer Evening" read for PoetrySnacks.