Q: What was the most significant moment in your life?
A: Probably the most significant moment was to be born into this life with goodly parents, and then it was every day I woke up after that and realized my love of life, nature, and people. I could not have enjoyed any experience in life so far, were it not for the gratitude my mother especially instilled in me. When I was about six years old, she read English poetry to me as bedtime stories. I still see that light brigade charging… 

Q: How did that moment change you?
A: I think my mother had secret foreknowledge that I was to be a poet and writer, and she set about building the foundations. Every hour with her was a manner of grace that changed my life for the better. 

In life generally, every moment changes one. Each climb makes a person, by the next increment, a new species of man (or woman). One trusts some small change, at least, takes place, with the right attitude. At one time I had a sense the more climbs I did the better person I would become. Finally I began to refine that and to know it isn’t the ascent so much as the state of awareness and the quality of love and appreciation during, after, and before the ascent. The numbers are not where it’s at, but the feeling. It’s the same with poetry. It’s not that you had a poem published that matters so much as the involvement with language, the intriguing journey of creating it. 

Q: What are those kids doing on your lawn?
A: The young always have been attracted to my world. I love to play, by nature, and a kid at heart, very immature and childlike even in old age. Kids sense that kindred energy. I have been a pied piper of the young for many years, in rock climbing and in chess and other areas, in large part because kids recognize a friend in me. They sense I understand them and that we are going to have fun, but also that they are going to learn. Kids admire creativity, and I have lots. 

Q: What would your best friend say is your worst personality trait?
A: Impatience. I have difficulty waiting for anything. Yet life is tailored in such a way as to force us to face our weaknesses. We are presented with opportunities daily to exercise what we have in short supply. If one is impatient, he will have to wait for hours alongside track for a freight train. He will have to wait for years for the right woman to materialize, though he will have impatiently engaged in relationship after relationship in search of such perfection. When I was young, I did not know how to patiently trust my own achievements or let them speak for themselves. I felt the world needed help knowing. Yes, they did. But had they made the discovery in their own time it would have meant more to them, and I would have meant more to them, than by acting as my own agent, which was the case in younger years at times, a result of immaturity and impatience.