Walter Simmons by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

My parents thought that I would be / As great as Edison or greater:

For as a boy I made balloons / And wondrous kites and toys with clocks / And little engines with tracks to run on / And telephones of cans and thread.

I played the cornet and painted pictures, / Modeled in clay and took the part / Of the villain in the Octoroon.

But then at twenty-one I married / And had to live, and so, to live / I learned the trade of making watches / And kept the jewelry store on the square, / Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking --

Not of business, but of the engine / I studied the calculus to build.

And all Spoon River watched and waited / To see it work, but it never worked.

And a few kind souls believed my genius / Was somehow hampered by the store.

It wasn't true. The truth was this:

I didn't have the brains.