Lost Overnight In The Woods Poem by John Beaton

This poem is a composite of three events, each of which, in its own way, felt surreal at the time.

I was fishing a remote Canadian river and didn't leave myself time to get back to my vehicle before dark so I decided to shortcut the route by bushwhacking in a straight line through the forest. I pushed on through a tough area and became stranded among large fallen trees and beaver dams. Darkness fell, pitch-black in the forest, and I had no light. Around midnight I heard running water then regained the river and my car at about 2 am.

I drove to a lake at first light in winter. The water was flat calm and there was a low ground fog. A flock of trumpeter swans was floating there, completely still, only their heads showing above the mist.

I went overnight backpacking by myself in early spring to near the head of an alpine lake in the Rockies. After getting too close for comfort to a grizzly in the night, I struck camp before first light. As the sun rose I saw a bull elk, behaving as in the poem (for the most part, anyway.

This poem has three six-line stanzas, each rhymed ababcc using "slant" or partial rhymes. The lines are pentameter (5 beats) with intermingled two-and three-syllable metrical units or "feet" (e.g. da-da-DA and da-DA) . The meter of the first line is: "the horIZon garrOTTES the TWIlight's THROAT. i SLEEPwalk." Robert Frost frequently used this type of "loose pentameter."