In the photo on the cover of Old Growth: New and Selected Poems by Mike O’Connor, the poet stands beside the trunk of a massive Douglas fir tree in a Whitmanesque pose of ease and delight. Hiking boots, long pants and shirt, a wide-brim hat, a white-barked, hand-carved walking stick: he’s ready for a day in the woods. On his left wrist, a surprising combo: a woven Buddhist bracelet and a big wrist watch. And the man’s face: open, aglow, so plainly at home here. Is he smiling for the camera, or at the friend taking his photograph, or could that radiant delight be his default emotional state?
The testimony of the poems suggests that O’Connor lived a charmed life, an outdoor and outward-facing life. His poems are exoteric; plain-spoken illuminations of significant moments along his path
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