The End of a Holiday

The summer camp had proved a great success.
They'd come like strangers; like so many friends
they went their various ways, and most of them,
the Northerners, returned on the same train.

She was dead tired after sleepless nights
of games with lamps among the stolid trees,
and daytime fun like hikes, a smuggling chase,
and in the evening sitting round the fire.

A single child, she felt alone at home,
and camping out like that in dust and dirt
and running with the pack, and late at night,
awake upon her pallet, looking at

the camp crew's faces near the dying fire
while listening to things half understood,
should have gone on forever. Nearing home
At every station one or more got off

until at last, when it was almost dark,
she'd waved them all goodbye, said her adieus...
A kindly lady tried to make her talk
but she sat staring mutely at her shoes.