Kara McNally

“Actually, this is a poem my father once showed me, a long time ago. It has been bastardized many times, in many ways, but this is the original:

The Cold Within

Six men trapped by happenstance,
in bleak and bitter cold

Each possessed a stick of wood,
or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
the first man held his back

For of the faces round the fire,
he noticed one was black.

One man looking cross the way,
saw one not of his church

And could not bring himself to give
the fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes,
he gave his coat a hitch

Why should his log be put to use
to warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
of the wealth he had in store

And how to keep what he had earned
from the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man's face bespoke revenge
as the fire passed from his sight,

For all he saw in his stick of wood
was a chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
did naught except for gain,

Giving only to those who gave,
was how he played the game

The logs held tight, in death's still
hands,
was proof of human sin

They didn't die from the cold without,
they died from the cold within.”
― James Patrick Kinney