Charlie Hopkins
ABOUT THE POET
I was born in Texas in 1950 and spent five years and seven or eight assorted months living in Fairfield, Iowa. Although I am no longer associated with the Transcendental Meditation organization, I remember the ordinary people of Fairfield with love, and I respect the community they have created together. Since leaving Iowa in 1988, I have supported myself and my family by house painting and paper hanging. For nine years, along with a close friend and family member, we owned and operated a paint and decorating store in Hood River, Oregon. Now we live just across the Columbia River in Underwood, Washington. Inspiration to write came as a young person reading the King James Version of The Old Testament Prophets, The Song of Solomon, and The Book of Revelations. I wanted to write the way Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Skeeter Davis, and George Jones sang. Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Pablo Neruda were guides. In addition, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Dylan Thomas, James Wright, James Dickey, T.S. Eliot, and friends from a writing group in Fairfield in the 1980s, some of whom are featured here, have been a light. Now I am inspired by the writing of my son Eli Hopkins and the music of my step son, Jeff Lehman. For the last twenty-two years I have experienced Grace in the form of my wife Carol. Everything good in my heart is her. I am always happy to hear from old and new friends at <cah@gorge.net>. Thank you for reading these poems.
PUBLISHED IN THIS ENDURING GIFT
Four Memories of North West Arkansas
Love Poem to a Chinese Tallow Tree
I Need to Feel You Every Moment in My Heart
House Painter Sitting on the Roof of a Queen Anne Victorian Looking over a Pear Orchard in Bloom
Seed Time in Fairfield, Iowa
Tenth Anniversary Prayer
Middle-Aged Man
Three Poems out of Southeast Iowa
Hymn of Praise to the Divine Mother in Her Role as Queen of Nature
Death Is Coming
A Man Will Abandon His Face
