As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours <br />On the shore of the turbid Spoon <br />With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow, <br />Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, <br />First his waving antennae, like straws of hay, <br />And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, <br />Gemmed with eyes of jet. <br />And you wondered in a trance of thought <br />What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all. <br />But later your vision watched for men and women <br />Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities, <br />Looking for the souls of them to come out, <br />So that you could see <br />How they lived, and for what, <br />And why they kept crawling so busily <br />Along the sandy way where water fails <br />As the summer wanes.<br /><br />Edgar Lee Masters<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/theodore-the-poet/
