Born on May 29, 1950, in Seattle, Washington, Mike Dillon grew up on Bainbridge Island, eight miles west across the water from Seattle. “By the time I reached the University of Washington in 1969,” Dillon writes, “my formal athletic career was over. I pitched a no-hitter in my first little league game, a moment of bliss I experienced again thirty-seven years later when Edgar Martinez doubled Ken Griffey Jr. home from first base to win the fifth and final game of the 1995 playoff series between the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees.
“As a little leaguer and for a few years beyond, I pitched and played first base. I throw left and bat right. I also write haiku and ‘regular’ poetry. I like the Pacific Northwest rain and sunshine when it happens. I live in a small town on Puget Sound, Indianola, and commute to Seattle where I publish a half-dozen community newspapers. I was first exposed to haiku in 1960 when my third-grade teacher put some haiku by Dag Hammarskjöld up on the blackboard. In the mid-1980s the work of Sam Hamill led me to Asian poetry and eventually haiku. It felt like a kind of homecoming.
“My first haiku was published in Modern Haiku in February 1988 and I have been a regular contributer to Modern Haiku and other haiku magazines ever since. I have one book of haiku in print, The Road Behind, from Red Moon Press.”
cold motel window:
faraway in the dusk
a softball game
the last kid picked
running his fastest
to right field