Alice Corbin Henderson’s tiny poem imagines the wind as a worn-out wrestler. All day, it hurls itself against the unyielding granite mountains — an exhausting, violent effort that leaves it drained. When night falls, there is no more fight. The wind creeps quietly down the canyon, just a tired presence slipping into rest. The contrast between the two moments is stark: daytime is all aggressive, head-on struggle, while nightfall brings a slow, weary retreat. There’s a quiet sadness in that image, as if the wind has no choice but to batter itself against stone and then drag itself away, spent. The short lines and plain language echo that empty, tired feeling — no drama, just the quiet end of a long fight. The mood feels both harsh and tender. You sense the speaker’s sympathy for this exhausted natural force, seeing it not as a mighty elemental power but as something that gets tired, that aches, that finally has to stop.
The Wrestler — Summary
The tired wind creeps down the canyon At nightfall.
By day it turns and flings itself Against the granite face of the mountains.