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 fire in need of logs,
 The first woman held hers back
 For on the faces around the fire
 She 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 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 to 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.