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 talked with animals—even toads and snakes—
To all in the village I seemed, no doubt,
To go this way and that way, aimlessly.
But here by the river you can see at twilight
The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there—
They must fly so to catch their food.
And if you have ever lost your way at night,
In the deep wood near Miller’s Ford,
And dodged this way and now that,
Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through,
Trying to find the path,
You should understand I sought the way
With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings
Were wanderings in the quest.
The cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling,
Calling,
Of a meaningless monotony is palling
All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered
wood.
May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling,
Falling
In a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawling
Messages of true-love down the dust of the highroad.
I do not like to hear the gentle grieving,
Grieving
Of the she-dove in the blossom, still believing
Love will yet again return to her and make all good.
When I know that there must ever be deceiving,
Deceiving
Of the mournful constant heart, that while she's
I WALKED when the wood was full of minstrelsy.
A pretty prince came down to talk with me.
He spoke so kindly, and quite loud:
Then he was gone, quick as high cloud.
That he came here is such a happy thing,
I sit quite still in the wood and sing.
High Heaven is insecure.
Give me my paradise while these warm arms endure.
Come, my Love! let us walk in this brake.
Where I can see you sleep, and watch you wake.
So much of pleasure, for Mortality's poor sake.
I WANT to be a carpenter.
To work all day long in clean wood,
Shaving it into little thin slivers
Which screw up into curls behind my plane ;
Pounding square, black nails into white boards.
With the claws of my hammer glistening
Like the tongue of a snake.
I want to shingle a house.
Sitting on the ridge pole in a bright breeze.
I want to put the shingles on neatly.
Taking great care that each is directly between two others.
I want my hands to have the tang of wood :
Spruce, Cedar, Cypress.
I want to draw a line on a board with a flat pencil.
And then saw along that line.
With the sweet-smelling sawdust piling up in yellow heap at my feet.
Pedro Montoya of Arroyo Hondo
Comes each day with his load of wood
Piled on two burros' backs, driving them down
Over the mesa to Santa Fe town.
He comes around by Arroyo Chamisa —
A small grey figure, as grey as his burros —
Down from the mountains, with cedar and pine
Girt about each of the burros with twine.
As patient as they are, he waits in the plaza
For someone who comes with an eye out for wood,
Then Pedro wakes up, like a bantam at dawn —
Si, Senor, si Senor — his wood is gone.
Pedro Montoya of Arroyo Hondo
Rides back on one burro and drives the other.
With a sack of blue corn-meal, tobacco and meat,
A bit to smoke and a bit to eat.