Every day the porcupine of E. H. Johnson's poem makes the same short journey: down to the creek, a drink, back up the hill. Nothing else happens. And yet the poem manages to turn this errand into a small comedy of character, because the porcupine does not simply walk, he progresses, like a dignitary with a schedule. The central idea is the gap between how an animal carries himself and how he looks, and the poem's affection lives in that gap. The porcupine is absurd and admirable at once, and Johnson refuses to choose between the two.
The first stanza sets up the personality before the animal is even named as dangerous. He "waddled," a word that is all belly and short legs, yet he is "chuckling over some secret joke," as if he alone has understood something the rest of the forest has missed. He is called "a proud old man," and the poem keeps this human frame going throughout. The woods become a society, "the forest folk," and he is the cantankerous elder who will not step aside on the pavement for anyone. The phrase "would not give way" is perfectly ordinary, almost a remark about manners, which makes the comedy sharper: the stakes are as small as who gets the path.
The second stanza introduces the source of his confidence, and the sound of the language does the work. "His armor of quills rattled and clicked" is made of hard, dry consonants, so we hear him coming before we picture him. The armor is a warning system as much as a defense, and the poem treats it that way: he is "warning all to clear his path." Then comes the poem's funniest turn. Even the bears, the largest and most feared animals in the forest, "knew they were licked." Johnson borrows the language of a boxing match or a lost argument, and the bears' reaction, "they turned aside in helpless wrath," is wonderfully deflated. Wrath is a grand word, but it is hobbled by "helpless." The strongest creatures in the woods are reduced to sulking, defeated not by force but by the simple fact that the porcupine cannot be touched.
Structurally, the poem is tidy and unhurried, in keeping with its subject. It is made of three quatrains rhymed ABAB: "day" and "way," "joke" and "folk," and so on through the later stanzas. The rhymes are plain and sturdy, never showy, and the meter is steady enough to feel like a measured walk, with just enough irregularity to keep it from sounding mechanical. The third stanza deliberately slows the pace further. "Quietly, slowly, he would drink his fill" gives us two soft adverbs in a row, and the line seems to settle in the way the animal does at the water's edge.
That stanza also introduces a new presence: "Keeping a wary eye on me." Until now the speaker was an invisible narrator, but here we learn there has been an observer all along, and the porcupine has been watching him too. It is a small, quiet reversal. The speaker is not the master of this scene; he is one more creature the porcupine keeps in check. The wariness is also the first hint that the proud old man is not entirely carefree, that his dignity is partly vigilance.
The closing line is the poem's best. "Then, wheezing, he would climb the hill, / Ludicrous in his great dignity." The wheeze punctures the pomp, reminding us that this is an old, short-winded animal, not a king. And "ludicrous" and "great dignity" sit side by side without cancelling each other out. Johnson does not mock the porcupine, and he does not worship him either. He lets both truths stand.
That balance is what makes the poem worth reading. It is a portrait of a kind of character we all recognize, the stubborn, self-contained figure who is a little ridiculous and a little magnificent, and whom we cannot help but like. In twelve lines, it shows how humor and respect can coexist, and how the smallest daily routine can reveal a whole personality.