Henry Thoreau Sleeping Under a Board

Alexander Theroux

"Those who have never tried it can have no idea how far a door, which keeps the single blanket down, may go toward making one comfortable."
                                            - A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Henry Thoreau having walked to
high cloudy Hoosack mountain, outside
at night slept under a wooden door,

after digging a well with his hands
and a sharp stone—he had also drunk 
water from holes in a horse's tracks --

boiling his favorite supper of rice
slurped with whittled wooden spoon
over a fire made with found scraps 

of old newspapers that he took time
to read for rustic entertainment, amused
by old ads from Boston firms,

and then under a moon like a pasha 
in pillows he encased himself in boards,
a door he at dusk he stepped through.