I - A poem by Alice Winstonn

I.

Shall I ever be free of you^___quite?
Shall I ever rise up in my might
And trample you under my feet
Down to the dust of the street?
When I fancy sometimes I am free
From the curse of the I that is Me,
Back he comes, smirking and sly,
In the strain of my triumphing cry,
In the glance in the glass that I cast;
When I feel that I've reached it, at last,
The plane where all selfishness dies;
When I'm ready in truth for the skies,
With the tail of my eye then I see
That impish, insistent Me,
Vaunting me,
Daunting me,
Haunting me^___
It were worth all the rest just to be
For a moment, an eon, quite free,
To cast off the I and the Me,
To be one with the wind and the sea.

^__Alice Winston

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 131
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)