The Good 5 Cent Cigar

Issue date: 4/28/09 Section: Editorial/Opinion

04/28/09 - Before becoming the 10th president of the University of Rhode Island, Robert L. Carothers was a poet. He earned a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D in English. Two volumes of his poetry have been published, "Freedom and Other Times" and "John Calvin's Favorite Son." Here is one of his poems, which is about hunting for muskrats in his youth.

Muskrat

The trick was to trap them in deep water.
Let them drown themselves.
Yet often, stumbling up our run,
Still sleepy and shivering in the night before morning.
My high boots shattering the night's new ice
That glazed the still pools between the bigger rocks,
I'd find one in the faint search of my light,
His rich coat smeared with mud and ice,
Twisting in the steel I laid for him,
Praying in his last need that I might accept
The long lamented lamb his father left me,
The splintered bone crying clean and white
His love from the hung matted flesh
In another night.
Too late, too late,
For sharp black eyes and long yellowed teeth,
Under my reigning foot in the rushing waters,
The bubbles of those days rising in silence;
And I looked away, impatient;
Shivering under the stars.

-Robert L. Carothers

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