I Am What I Must Be Poem by Frank Avon

I am what I must be.
I am a gravel road that leads to a large log house.
I am the walnut trees that shade the gravel.
I am the stock gap at the end of the lane.
I am the mailbox at ten o'clock every morning, hopefully open.
I am those hedgeapple trees that bear false fruit in the fencerow.
I am those blackberry vine, the old thorny ones, the new green ones.
I am ironweed.
I am a prickly pear.
I am limestone that clefts the plum thicket.
I am the jagged oak, hit by lightning, that still stands.
I am one of the seven springs for which this farm in named.
I am the silver, trickling creek that bare feet wade in.
I am the old beech and the spring it springs from and hovers over.
I am the dragonflies, the snake doctors, the skeeters on its surface.
I am the field of wheat and the combine that reaps it.
I am the team - the sorrel mare and the black jenny mule.
I am the John Deere H.
I am also the nest of hornets - ask no more.
I am the corn rows and the ragweeds daring someone to pull me.
I am a shady hillside made for dreaming.
I am the watering trough and the livestock that come there.
I am the muddy pond and the dam that seals it.
I am the nanny goat and the kids she bears.
I am the Rhode Island Red rooster with the harem of hens he crows of.
I am the foxhounds, hungry and loud.
I am Reynard who eludes them.
I am the hill to the south with its winding road
I am the moonshiner behind it and his ilk, whom he succors.
I am the sunset behind the woodlands.
I am the rock wall that's tumbling unkempt
I am the barbed wire on the new fence beyond it.
I am the crows that walk and talk there.
I am still the child with his little red wagon.
I am the garage painted silver and the basketball goal above it.
I am the scrawny box elder.
I am the grape arbor and the winesap apples.
I am the Sears 'n Roebuck catalog.
I am the corn shed and the corn sheller.
I am the lespedeza hay, scratchy and itchy.
I am the upstairs window.
I am the limestone chimney.
I am the Warm Morning heater.
I am the stovewood hat feeds it.
I am the long, long front porch
I am the swing that swings on it.
I am the locusts.
I am Dr. Van Fleet.
I am the mock orange shrubs.
I am the wide blue skies.
I am the thunderstorm in August.
I am the jonquils that bloomed in February and the blizzard that froze them.
I am the Black Angus bull, bellowing monstrously.
I am a slimy little lizard.
I am the tobacco hornworm. (Am I the imperial moth it will become?)
I am the lost boy who didn't know he was lost.
I am the outsider who couldn't find himself in the names others called him.
I am the rat terrier he cherished.
I am the one who worked the fields and walked the woods.
I am Ursa Major. I am Orion. I am Sirius.
I am the one who left and never returned.
I am the one who escaped and never will.

I am who I am.
I am Columbus who discovered a New World.
I am the world that was never new.
I am the one who discovered himself when he left.