Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, March 20th, 2004.

Today's poem is by Robert Frost, and it's called Out, Out.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and then read it again.

Out, out.

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard, and made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted

eyes could count five mountain ranges, one behind the other, under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, as it ran light or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened.

Day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said, to please the boy by giving him the half hour,

that a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside him in her apron to tell them, supper.

At the word, the saw, as if to prove saws knew what supper meant, leaped out at the boy's

hand, or seemed to leap, he must have given the hand. However it was, neither refused the meeting,

but the hand. The boy's first outcry was a rueful the meeting, but the hand.

The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,

as he swung toward them holding up the hand half in appeal,

but half as if to keep the life from spilling.

Then the boy saw all.

Since he was old enough to know,

...