Page 69

This page turns the muskrat into a slightly comic but watchful creature emerging from a rough rural world.

The short poem relies on vivid physical detail more than argument. Its oddity comes from how matter-of-factly the animal is given a scene, a gaze, and a purpose.

A compact muskrat sketch, five lines of rural field-note: 'And there he came about: that muskrat: / Licking his chops with spring water / Right put of that hole, eyes like Eienstien / About the dout and the calves, / he had gone to see.' The comedy is in the incongruous comparison -- a muskrat with 'eyes like Eienstien' -- given a scene, a gaze, and even a motive (he had come to inspect 'the dout' and 'the calves'). The flat, matter-of-fact reporting treats the animal as a deliberate witness to the farm's drought. The source spellings 'put' (for out), 'Eienstien,' and 'dout' (for drought) are preserved verbatim per scan review.