Fiddler Jones

Listen to:

Fiddler Jones (1:19)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

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