The Six Logs

Have you ever participated in a Whodunit? A mystery novel, play, etc. in which a crime is solved at the end by the principal character, usually a detective, using clues scattered throughout the story. If you have never been afforded the opportunity, here is your chance.
First of all, the following poem will be used in place of a novel or a play. Second, choose one principal character in the poem. Third, whoever you choose as the principal character that is the character you will become in order to solve the mystery. Fourth, you will not receive any clues. Fifth, I welcome letters from anyone who feels they solved the mystery. And finally, the mystery that you must solve is, “Who or What Killed the Following Six Humans?”

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story’s told.


Their dying in need of logs,
The first man held his back;
For on the faces around the fire
He noticed one was black.

The next man, looking cross the way,
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn’t 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 sight;
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.

The last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain,
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

Their 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.
(Unknown)

Were these six deaths senseless?

Was it necessary that they perish? What life experience(s) caused each individual to ignore the good they held in their hand? Did each of them fully comprehend that by not allowing the good in their hand to achieve its purpose meant their death? Was Plautus correct when he said that “No man is wise enough by himself.”

Will you withhold your log or use it wisely!

Antonio G. Saldaña