Beginning of Essay
The entire poem is a metaphor taken literally it can be considered just a short story about a man stranded on a beach. He wakes up early in the morning, awake and very alive, he goes to sleep feeling secure. He learns how to survive by eating porcupine bellies ....

Middle of Essay
.... to keeping the quills in his hat. In the third stanza Birney shows us through a series of metaphorical actions the characters evolution in his attitude towards the entire situation. At first our character is still unsure and alert at all that is happening around him, " At first he was out with the dawn." Yet he becomes more and more sure of himself and feels very secure, " A guard of goat before falling asleep on its feet at sundown." Earle Birney uses the goat as a metaphor for security because a goat does not slip of the rocky mountain tops that our character is reaching for. In the last stanzas the poem changes tone. I ....