| 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, | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
| 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. | 15 |
| Sometimes I talked 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 | 20 |
| 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. | 25 |
