Baker Brownell

From “In Barracks”

THE WIND soured into night.

Acid of a narrow rain

Pitted the sentries’ paces

With spits of cold.

The wind grew in hoarse breaths

With the night’s age,

Until the night was wind,

And darkness spouted on the prone earth

From the West’s nozzle.

Wind and night, roaring

Like mated beasts,

Pressed huge bodies

On the bulging walls

Of tied Sibley tents.

One by one the double-headed pegs

Pulled with a souseling kiss

From the rain-weak earth.

A rope snapped; a wall flap

Jumped; the tent heaved,

Bulged upward

With scared awkwardness,

And fell on a broken tripod.

The wind, night, rain,

With huge onwardness,

West, south, east, north, poured itself

Bitterly on the flat earth.

Three Nature-whipped sentries,

Tied into their ponchos,

Pried through the heaving night

Like tired swimmers.