Photo is my grandfather, my father, myself, my son, 1964. Grandfather as adolescent outside 
Black Hills Blacksmith lolled beside the silent blind old guy sitting cross-legged backwards at 
rear of a wagon, while inside the men all whispered around the forge. Grandfather overwhelmed 
by reverence in the Deadwood air asked, as ponies rolled the wagon on out of sight, “Who was 
that man?” No one spoke. It was Red Cloud.

Grandfather’s best friend growing up was Rueben-Looks-Twice from Pine River Reservation. It 
was Grandfather who taught me the woods, mountains, streams, deer, eagles, and everything else 
that matters at high altitude. Nevertheless, the summer after my freshman year at college, while 
fighting fires in the Idaho Rockies, I took longer rolling up my gear than others, struggled to top 
of the ridge to tail them packing out. I turned wrong instead of right in dawn light and soon was 
lost far upon the pinnacle of 1960.

I was again trying to find my way through the summer of 1965, separated from my wife, in the 
title poem of my M.A. thesis, “The Poet Behind the Poem.” I couldn’t do it. I finished the thesis, abandoning the poem, lost my lover, rejoined my wife 
in Tacoma, began my first professorship at my alma mater Pacific Lutheran University, separated from my wife a second time, before our move to Portland 
State University in Oregon, where it was me, my wife, son, our new daughter, and after all the cold months, start of the Summer of Love 1967, our third 
and final separation.

I finished “The Poet Behind the Poem” 1965-66 there at PLU in Tacoma, touched it up recently for this submission, changing no more than a dozen words. The 
poem is nearly word for word what I labored out 45 years ago. I had begun a notebook, preparing a novel The Trees Are on Fire! during that same fall 
of 1965, but had abandoned all the notes in 1967 without scratch of a novel. I tried to reduce it all to a poem 11/10/68 alone in Portland but failed, so 
crossed out all deadwood, saving only fragments that seemed to vibrate vitality. When I finally got back to my fragments 10/12/09 after 41 years, I was 
shocked that they worked pretty much as is, and finished it rapidly. I began “High in Idaho Rockies” with a first horrible draft 12/14/64, quickly abandoned. 
I did the real work now 45 years later December 2009 for this submission.

None of these poems has been published previously in any version whatsoever. My Washington State University The Poet Behind the Poem, a volume of my 
poetry introduced by 10 pages on creative process was the first creative M.A. thesis in English ever allowed way back in Pullman.