About  the Author: Robert Nichols (me)

About 50 years ago when I was a sophomore in high  
school, I decided to be a writer.  Just goofing around with
words in class one day, I wrote a haiku.  It was Miss Henneke’s
ancient history class and, aptly enough, as quiet as a tomb.  I
was drifting away during study time and out of the dim void
this poem came to me:

Still pond in the woods.
Flawless surface spoiled by
the rain that feeds it.

I passed it over my shoulder to my friend Mike Nolan.  He
read it and then, in a booming deep voice, he shattered the
stillness of that room.

He said, “Wow!”


So, for almost five decades now, I’ve been writing poems,
stories, novels, essays . . . you name it . . . all in quest of Wow!
Sure, I’ve done a few other things along the way to pay
the bills.  I’ve been a truck driver, a packing house laborer, a
carpenter, an English teacher, and a Maytag Man among
other endeavors.  But, in truth, I was always, simply and
thoroughly, a poet.  A poet who on some occasions drove a
truck, on others swung a hammer or taught Shakespeare and
subordinate clauses, and on others, a poet who fixed
appliances.