Deep in the woods at night
I came upon an awful sight
a corpse, ashen and stiff
it was quite a terrible fright
The body was by the cliff
and suddenly it did shift
I screamed, ran like hell
my legs moved very swift
I got lost and gave a yell
my panic I tried to quell
I heard loud footsteps behind me
and sensed a putrid smell
The dead man, it was he
standing by an oak tree
and then my heart did burst
after I cried like a banshee.
(Photo by Tom Morel on Unsplash)
Author’s Note: This poem uses quatrains, four-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme, which I read about in the Poetry Foundation’s Glossary of Poetic Terms. I modeled the poem after Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which uses a rhyme scheme of AABA. Frost’s poem talks about the woods, so I decided to also write something about the woods, but with a more Edgar-Allan-Poe-ish twist.
