Poetry Stream

7 November 2025

Another early post on how I became a poet, in particular, a narrative poet. As a sidenote, the little boy listed in the poem, My Backyard, listed below, is now the man who built this website on my behalf–kudos and thanks for him!

6 August 2012

I took my first poetry class in the fall of ‘94, in which I was introduced to many different contemporary poets. Two of these seemed to speak directly to me: William Stafford and Li Young Lee. I heard in these two poets voices that were similar to mine. With Stafford I was struck by the ‘everyday’ of his poems, especially “Traveling through the Dark.” The poet is traveling at night on one of the narrow, treacherous roads leading to the Oregon coast (I had by then traveled several times over one of these roads) when he comes upon a deer lying in the road, having been struck by a previous traveler. The poet stops, ponders on the moment, then rolls the dead deer into the ditch to make the road safer for travelers who will follow him–a simple action incorporating profound thoughts and reflections. I was staggered by the simple, common nature of this poetic moment–it changed the way I saw poetry, amazing me with the layers of meaning that could be folded into such an everyday event. A door in my mind opened, a door of infinite possibility.

With Lee, we read a collection of his poems titled The City in which I Love You. The title poem was longer but in the same vein as Stafford’s: everyday happenings as the grounds for poetry, Lee adding another level of sharp focused detail that brought each incident alive in the reader’s mind. One particular incident that caught me was one in which the poet remembers his father removing a thorn from his foot, embedded so deeply that it required a knife to remove it. A similar thing had happened to me as a child, only it was my grandfather who used his knife to remove the thorn from my heel (I still have a scar on the side of my heel!), and Lee’s poem brought this moment back to me vividly–I had found my style and voice, although several more months would pass before it would gel.

In class we continued to experiment, given different assignments or prompts to write poems. One of these was an abstract sculpture that used to be behind the classroom building on UI’s campus, which produced “Passing Through Space/Time”. Another assignment was to take a walk and write a poem on the walk: I walked through UI’s arboretum, writing “Alien World,” both of these published in Words Fail. I think the first one I wrote after reading Stafford’s poem was “My Backyard” as I watched our two middle children, toddlers then, playing in the first real backyard we ever had:

My Backyard

Little boy eats dandelions amidst
jumbled assortment of chairs and toys.
Little girl circles a pole as
another leaf makes its final journey
to earth, shaken loose by a gentle wind.

Siren shouts warnings in the distance,
coming closer now, answering
someone’s need or catching
someone’s attempt at non-conformity.

Lawn is rich blue-green yet
some sections seem more weed than grass.
Pile of branches, fall prunings,
waiting to be chipped,
given back to the soil.

Hint of smoke in the air, some farmer
burning the stubbled remains of his fields.
Smoke clouds the sky to the north.

Little boy seeks to unlock the mysteries
of the wheel, little girl joins him–
together, they try and get water from a hose.

Raspberries completely obscure the fence,
threatening a militant takeover of the garden.
Birds perch on power lines which are not
visibly connected to any house on my street.

The sounds of laughter and shouting appear
suddenly– recess at one of the nearby schools.
Little girl demands my attention, dancing frantically.
I lay my notebook aside. . . .

Also during this time period, I wrote “A Moment with Wisdom,” which posits the idea of the storyteller speaking with one of his characters long after the events of the story take place, the poet/storyteller asking the character what happens in the end (also published in Words Fail). I wrote my first ‘love poem’ during this semester, “Time Alters All Flesh,” concerning the relationship between a man and a woman, and how it changes over time.

As noted above, my poetic voice didn’t ‘gel’ until the second semester, in the advanced poetry class, in which I began writing narrative poems–telling a story in poetic form. A couple of the first were “The Taskmaster,” written about my dad and his early Saturday morning wood cutting, and “The Matchbox Incident,” about a prank one of my brothers played on ‘the old man’ while we were watching the film, The Villain. My poetry professor and the grad assistant pulled me aside after class and told me, in strong terms, that they wanted to read more poems like these two, more narratives. I obliged, choosing to write, for my final project, a collection of poems concerning life on the farm/ranch, titled Ode to a Stump Farm (forthcoming). One of these moments concerned a city kid–me–being told by the taskmaster to build an outhouse using whatever I could find (leftover junk); I called it “The Outhouse,” which again induced my instructors to tell me to write more like this one. Here it is, for the reader’s amusement and to close this chapter of the ongoing saga of ‘how I got this way’:

The Outhouse

“Go build an outhouse,”
Dad told me one evening.
Winter fast approaching,
money
all but gone, many things
unfinished,
bringing order,
civilizing,
great-grandpa’s North Idaho
homestead.

We accomplished much–
forging our niche,
running time, vanishing
dollars defeated us.
Septic system incomplete,
reverting to yesteryear’s
sewage
treatment plant:
hole in the ground,
small house
waxing crescent in the door.

“What shall I use?” I asked.
“Use leftover materials:
foundation forms, cedar
fence rails, recycled
tin roofing, assorted
2×4’s,
placed downwind,
out of scent, sight.”
Armed with a shovel
I set out to find
perfect place, obscured,
out of scent, out of mind.

Behind great-grandpa’s
4th of July stump,
seemed
fitting place for
our refuse repository.
I chipped a hole–
hardly adequate, Dad noted–
in the hard pan, built
frame, roof, and floor,
the seat,
made to my measure–
nearly six feet tall–
ran out of tongue & groove
before
the seat was covered,
ran out of siding,
after
only two walls and a floor.

Proud of my work
built without a plan from
discarded materials,
two-seater
with a view.
“Well,” Dad began,
“at least it’s well-ventilated.”
“What about bears?” Mom stammered.
“They’re welcome to use it.”
“Not while I’m here!”
“It’s a two-seater.”

Dawn of a spring day,
sleepily
I marched the forty-five yards,
heard
rumbling sigh,
saw–
maybe a trick of the light,
sleep in my eyes–
Smoky step out,
buckling his pants,
“Nice view,”
he disappeared into the trees.

“There is one, slight
problem,”
Mom noted, still
unconvinced.
She plopped down on the seat, legs stiff,
straight–Lily Tomlin
in giant rocking chair–
through gritted teeth,
hissed:
“I can’t bend my knees!”

To be continued. . . .