Willie Metcalf by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

I was Willie Metcalf.

They used to call me "Doctor Meyers"

Because, they said, I looked like him.

And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.

I lived in the livery stable, / Sleeping on the floor / Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog, / Or sometimes in a stall.

I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses / Without getting kicked -- we knew each other.

On spring days I tramped through the country / To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, / That I was not a separate thing from the earth.

I used to lose myself, as if in sleep, / By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.

Sometimes I taIked with animals -- even toads and snakes --

Anything that had an eye to look into.

Once I saw a stone in the sunshine / Trying to turn into jelly.

In April days in this cemetery / The dead people gathered all about me, / And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.

I never knew whether I was a part of the earth / With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked --

Now I know.