On Being Drafted into the
U.S. Army from My Log Home
in March 1942

Weather and time, time and weather

Shriveled the wall, crumbled and chinking,

Raised the top log, the lower sinking,

Opening a space between upper and nether,

Making a crack for inside to look out

And outside to peer wonderingly in;

Peer wonderingly in where I am sleeping,

Trouble the dark, harry and flout

Slumberer from sleep, cricket from neeping.

But who on an evening at a quarter past seven

Stared from dusk and weight of heaven?

Mars hung bright in the Wolfpen sky

And glared and met me eye to eye.

Mars looked in and routed me out.