An Epic

Lo! In a morn of the dwindling winter,
when earth-frosting all lay melting to mud,
in that day was decreed that the trash must be taken
out to the street. (And oft we have heard
how such things are forgotten and left still to linger,
o'erflowing the lid.)

In darkling of night, after breath-freezing dusk,
an inkling returned to those ill-fated boys
of the deed unaccomplished. Desperate they rose
and donned their jackets (well-proven weeds
in elder days woven to stand against cold)
then silently (so they would not wake the neighbors)
they slipped from a side-door and lifted the trashcan.
They bore it between them, a bier of banana-peels,
lightly o'er gravel to the end of the driveway.
Then racing they ran over wintery leaves
(sodden, not crunchy like leavings of autumn)
and returned to the household with tale of their daring.
Hail them heartily, those domestic defenders,
trial-proven warriors, the home-coming heroes.



(Of course, a really first-rate Anglo-Saxon poet would have gone over the history of the jacket-makers and their well known family disputes, given the boys' family tree, and probably thrown in the trashcan's to boot. But oh well.)