This morning I stood

at the back door waving goodbye to my cousins when they took off for school and there was Mount Rainier so close. Although I'd been there for days, I never saw it until that moment. Somehow my personal daily experience had taken on more meaning; somehow transcended that mundane moment. I thought of William Stafford taking an insignificant personal moment or chance encounter (perhaps with a mountain) and make it significantly poetic. The everyday charged with deeper meaning. This formula has been imitated so often in this region's poetry that it has become tiresome and predictable (even moreso than the new formalism which at least has fun with meter and rhyme). Then I thought of the formalism of haiku and how -- at its best-- it captures and then transcends "the moment" in a few syllables. An American haiku of this morning's experience may go like this:

waving to the boys
on their way to school
Mount Rainier

But there's still too much going on -- waving, going, the mountain. So wouldn't it be better just to write:

I saw Mount Rainier this morning

But even that has too much going on -- the self, the mountain, the morning. So I finally ended up with this poem:

Mt. Rainier!

Using punctuation to carry the familiar and the surprise I first experienced when I saw how close the mountain was this morning.

@Sumner, WA