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 and keeping their quills as a prize for his hunting and survival skills. Taken on the metaphorical level it is all about a man who created a perfect life fore himself, a rainbow as Earle Birney put it. His perfect life was ruined by some unknown catastrophe, “But lightning struck it sh ....