Meet BILL ASPLUND, UTSPS President Elect

Bill Asplund tells us: “I was born in Canada and came to Utah in 1968 to teach economics at Utah State University. Then in 1976 I took a job with the Utah State Legislature where I spent the rest of my career." Currently serving as President Elect of UTSPS, he is in charge of our spring convention which will be held at the Davis Conference Center in Layton, Utah on Friday and Saturday, April 22 and 23. “It’s a wonderful facility and attached to the Hilton Garden Hotel.  Put it on your calendar.”

Continuing, Bill remembers, “I still have the first poetry book my parents gave me the Christmas I was 4 ‘When We Were Very Young’ by AA Milne, and I have been reading and writing poetry ever since. I joined the Ben Lomond chapter some 9 or 10 years ago and have been in the Utah State Poetry Society ever since. I love poetry and like to hang out with people who feel the same. Below is the first poem I ever entered in the statewide UTSPS competition. It won first place in the children’s poetry category.  I've been waiting ever since for another win.  This poem appeared in my wife’s obituary.”

WHEN THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

(For my Grandchildren)

                                 Billy Asplund

I woke up this morning and the sky was all gone,

It leaked from its place and oozed out on the lawn.

The sun was still there, but the sky goodness knows

Was sticky and gooey and squished through my toes.

It smelled like burnt toast smeared with apricot jam,

But the color was more like very old ham,

Sort of light blue, with a shimmer of green.

It’s the most unusual scene that I’ve seen.

No sky up above, just nothing, kaput,

No color, no clouds, no jet trails or soot,

And what can you do when the sky’s underfoot.

You could stand on your head, with your wrists in the goo

And think very hard, with your face turning blue,

That it just isn’t fair (as so seldom it is),

Like a bottle of pop that has lost all its fizz.

The natural laws say the sky is the sky,

But when it is not there you want to know why,

And the answers you get are more than uncertain,

Like trying to guess what’s behind a closed curtain.

For you just never know when waking at dawn

What will be there and what will be gone.