About the Poet

Born in 1932, the height of the depression, Don was the oldest son of Albert and Sylvia Washburn.  Albert, a careful, dependable man worked for the Lehigh Valley railroad most of his life.  Sylvia, a feisty red head, was a stay-at-home mother.  Don and his younger brother Ken  attended school in their home town of Easton, Pennsylvania, an ethnically mixed,    blue-collar city  on the Delaware river. Don's first collection of poems--The Boy From Under the Trees-- explores that world and the excitement of being able to run free in the neighborhoods for whole summers at a time.

Don's football scholarship to Yale opened the way to a career as a teacher, first in secondary school.  Later, with a Ph.D in communication from Denver University, he spent over fifty years in college English departments, teaching an enormous variety of subjects, including literature, speech, semantics, and  metaphysics.  Since 1971 he has been a professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts  and has made his home in North Adams at the northern edge of the Berkshires. His favorite courses are "The Power of Words," "Science and Spirit," "Rumi's Vision," and "Divine Witness."

During that same period Don, a pliable geminian, was blessed with five wives and four children, a prodigality shared by many in his generation.   Relationships with women have always been an important part of his education and continue to this day to lighten up his life.  Of course, love is always a risk, one Don has usually been willing to take.   The events, however, depicted In The Eye of the Red-tailed Hawk have left him somewhat chastened. Even, so, four of his ex-wives are still dear friends-- no small achievemnent.  His children and grandchildren, thanks to their mothers, have turned out to be especially gifted in countless ways.  

Don has always been a listener of music, mostly classical, but he had never learned an instrument.   With the advent of the computer, he discovered that musical illiteracy was no handicap.  With the help of Joseph Schillinger's books and several courses with local composers, he taught himself to make music using the Cakewalk Sonar programs, which are the musical equivalent of word processors.  Several pieces that have continued to satisfy him are available on this web site.

In 1980, Don found his way to the Sufi community at New Lebanon, New York, where he began his spiritual studies in the Sufi Order of the West, led then by Pir Vilayat Khan.   The Abode of the Message was his home for two years, and he became not only an initiate, but also a cherag, someone trained to preside at Universal Worship Services.  He also was a member of the first graduating class of the Suluk Academy, then a four year program in Sufi studies.    The Sufi experience was invaluable in opening his heart to the reality   of God.  He has also become a communicant in the United Church of Christ. Prayer Beads is the harvest taken from these years. The poems are a record of the "wisdom" that Don, as a perennial seeker, has been able to make his own.  But perhaps there is more to come.

Obviously Don's life has been showered with blessings, so many that it serves to demonstrate  how grace trumps error and shortsightedness. Praise be to the One whose mercy makes everything  possible.