My diary fifty years ago - last Friday in July, 1968.  My poem The Ajax Samples was later included in my first chapbook, After I Have Voted.   I would go back to U of Washington, Seattle, in September.  I wrote poems during the summer, I looked for work, I did a few oil paintings.  There were some rainy summer days, it was the same place I left when I went to U of Washington in the autumn. 

A Poem from my chapbook, After I Have Voted

The scheduled reader for the Distinguished Writer Series was not able to be present yesterday evening.  It was the sunny last part of a beautiful day, the attending audience read extra poems for the open mike.  This was one of the poems I read from my earliest chapbook, After I Have Voted:

TO HAVE YOU HEAR

two sounds at once,
walking and not walking,
I stop in the parking lot gravel.

There is a fire back of the log,
a sandy beach, behind trees big with summer.

Two big umbrella butterflies (like Haiku elephants)
flutter one by one
among the leaves, their shadows, and the air.

On the green slopes
the sprinklers turn like maypoles.

It has been summer for weeks now,
and you refuse to talk about it.

After I Have Voted was published by The Gemini Press in Seattle, 1972, in summer 1968 I wrote some of the poems when I stayed with my parents in Tacoma after my first year at University of Washington. 

Tacoma Historical Society and Tacoma Main Library

The Boater - from Navy Uniform

At the Tacoma Historical Society

Uniforms from the collection of Alice Miller at Tacoma Historical Society Saturday.

Scientific Shoes   Tacoma,  Wash.

The Poplar Trees In Wright Park

Another View of the Poplar Trees in Wright Park.

Not Poplars, Maple Trees

The trees in the previous post are not poplars, they are maples.  They are columnar maples, maples suitable for tight spaces.

Peacocks and Poplars

Poplars?

Back in Finland, at the Helsingfors Zoo – 1990 – the peacock possessed such solitude which made an impression on me of vulnerability.  I traveled alone I think I transferred the solitude in my thoughts.   At a short distance along the path a different side of a zoo wall appeared where the peacock others moved about where they were gathered.  Their casual gaze slightly noticed me.  Outnumbered. 

Along the block downhill from the park and kitty corner across the street from the Hob Nob:  can these street trees be Poplar Trees?  Have these street trees become another aspect of Poplar Trees in this neighborhood?

Thoughts About Trees and Family At Wright Park

Tree Name Card

My great-grandmother joined my great-grandfather when he had spent nine years in Tacoma, she traveled with their two daughters, Amanda and Marie, to arrive in August, 1896.  Probably Lowell School was the early outreach, but soon First Lutheran Church must have become a destination too.  Like my experience, they went to school, they came straight home.  I have rediscovered that there are more Lombardy Poplars at the park, planted in 1895. 

Four Poplar Trees

How tall would a Lombardy Poplar Tree at Wright Park have been if my grandmother and her sister wanted to walk from the church at 8^th and “I” through the park to take the streetcar the rest of the way downhill to Old Tacoma?  The Lombardy Poplars might have been 28 years old in 1923, if my mother or her brothers wanted to walk from the church, still at 8^th and “I”, through the park to take the streetcar the rest of the way downhill to Old Tacoma.  In 1924, when the Lombardy Poplars were 29 years old, my uncle Ray began Confirmation Class.  Confirmation Class was a one-year experience then, compared to the two-year experience of the 1960s, when I was confirmed at First Lutheran Church.  The very old flowering cherry tree near the bus stop may be the younger flowering cherry tree there when I waited for the bus to ride back to the Proctor Neighborhood.  We went to church, we came straight home.

Their grandfather often drove them to school, and probably to Sunday School in his Chrysler.  They also often walked to school, however, up the steep hill from Old Town.