“Shepherd Girl”, the poem I am currently developing, describes a day in the hard but simple youth of my mother. At eight years old, it was her duty to watch sheep up the nearby mountain, spending many hours alone on the eastern extension of the Little River range. Twice now have I been confronted with an erroneous understanding (on my part) of the details she had shared of that period.

The slope and fold, for example, were not where I thought they were, and she lived then in a different locale! These discoveries I had to weave anew into the composition as, upon pressing her further, she provided greater clarification. There is in the work a touch of pastoral romanticism—a fragile girl on a rugged mountain—but I want as far as possible her actual experience reflected in the lines.