The earth keeps some vibration going <br />There in your heart, and that is you. <br />And if the people find you can fiddle, <br />Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. <br />What do you see, a harvest of clover? <br />Or a meadow to walk through to the river? <br />The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands <br />For beeves hereafter ready for market; <br />Or else you hear the rustle of skirts <br />Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. <br />To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust <br />Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; <br />They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy <br />Stepping it off to 'Toor-a-Loor.' <br />How could I till my forty acres <br />Not to speak of getting more, <br />With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos <br />Stirred in my brain by crows and robins <br />And the creak of a wind-mill--only these? <br />And I never started to plow in my life <br />That some one did not stop in the road <br />And take me away to a dance or picnic. <br />I ended up with forty acres; <br />I ended up with a broken fiddle-- <br />And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, <br />And not a single regret.<br /><br />Edgar Lee Masters<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fiddler-jones/
