High Coup is a quiet rebellion from the author's otherwise technical life-a poetic breakwater against decades of scientific education, Naval service, and Medical practice.
Poetry has long been his secret escape route, a tether to beauty and sanity, a connection to an elevated form of humanity.
He never let his peers in on the secret.
Not even his brother suspected he was the one reading all those old books Mom refused to throw out.
As time passes and miles accumulate, his quiet reading gives way to furtive writing.
Scribbled fragments get stuffed into burgeoning notebooks that travel with him for decades.
When he finally sorts through them, an unlikely treasure is revealed: Haiku.
Many emerge unintentionally, tucked within longer drafts, waiting to be drawn out and honored in their own right.
This book is both a collection and an experiment-an irreverent twist on a centuries-old form, with some original invention ("Bri-Ku") thrown in for good measure.
It's also a first leap into publishing, a foray outside the author's familiar world of Engineering and Medicine.
While he's never actually purchased a book of Haiku before, he's created one anyway-tongue in cheek, fully aware of the irony, hopeful it lands with readers who, like him, never saw it coming.
High Coup: All original. Nothing artificial. Let's see if you can read just one.
As a young denizen of the American Southwest, the author lived for several formative years next door to his Uncle Thomas-"Unk"-an Army combat veteran of both World War I and II.
A curious synchronicity began to unfold, unnoticed by the rest of the family.
On scorching summer afternoons, Unk becomes the de facto babysitter while the boy waits for the desert heat to abate.
While reading Unk's magazines, he plots his next bout of mischief, and absorbs something deeper.
One day, Unk falls into a quiet trance and recites "In Flanders Fields," start to finish, entirely from memory.
The young listener is transfixed:
How could these words spring from this battle-hardened old man?
A few months later, it happens again! This time, it's Longfellow's "My Lost Youth."
In these moments, poetry takes hold.
If Unk reveres it, after all he's done and seen, then poetry must be the real deal.
When Unk gifts him an LP by The Doors-his first rock record-that deal is sealed.
Ten years later, the sunburnt Arizona boy ships off to endure Plebe Summer at the United States Naval Academy, earn a degree in Electrical Engineering, and serve in the Nuclear Navy aboard a fast attack submarine.
Afterward comes Medical School, courtesy of the United Stated Army.
After decades of service, thousands of poems, and a lifetime of travel-including remote wanderings aboard a sailboat-he is now convinced: Wherever you go, Poetry is always near.
