COMMENTARY ON MY POETRY

Normally when I write a poem, some line or couplet just occurs to me, and then I develop a poem around it. I was a member of a working group at NASA for two years considering missions to comets and asteroids. The couplet just popped into my mind “Who could possibly be annoyed, about the study of an asteroid.” I would get up in the mornings saying this couplet and charge off to do battle. I was soon to find out that there were those, influential those, who were annoyed indeed and referred to comets and asteroids as the “vermin of the skies” because the light paths ruined their astronomical photo plates of far off galaxies as they streaked across the photo plates and ruining them. However, I was loaned out to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to help set up the lunar sample program. “Upon The Second Anniversary Of Apollo 11" was my first attempt to write a poem about a most historic event in human history without a line or couplet first occurring to me.

The poem The Adde Dee is included for a couple of reasons. For one, the lady who got me to start printing up my poems - Lyn Stern - said she liked it the best. For another, I was a bit of a smart ass in high school, and we were given the task of writing a poem at least 30 lines long, why 30 I don’t recall. I wrote the Adde Dee which was originally 20 lines long, but by adding the repetition and adding one last line, I ended up with a poem of 36 lines. I actually gave some thought at the time as to how I could shorten it six lines, but let it go. Perhaps the English teacher, Miss Munson, was on to what I was doing, but she gave me an A- anyway.

For nearly three years at the beginning of the 1960s, I lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, just off the peak of Washington, D.C. and Rock Creek Park. I used to drive six miles to work through the park in the mornings, unimpeded by red lights and stop signs and back again at night. It was a wonderful way to start and end the day. This led to two of the poems, Rock Creek Waters and Moment Of Peace. It was also the inspiration for the narrative Remembrance Of A Spring Morn. Then I was transferred to Denver in colorful Colorado where I would drive three miles past used car lots and motels to go to work. It was not a spiritual experience. But I was taken by the huge cottonwood trees along the irrigation ditches and wrote a poem about them. They are, alas, no more.

Several children’s poems are included. One - Outside My Window - was dedicated to my nephew Robert when he was six years old and May Day Tradition was commissioned by the Lakewood Presbyterian Church, my only attempt to write a poem on request. One other of these “Mother’s Day” is the earliest poem that I wrote that was saved.