Poets on the Plains: On Childhood

Hi, I’m Wayne Miller. I’m a poet who lives in Denver, Colorado, and I’m here for Poets on the Plains.

Today I’m going to read one of my own poems—from my book The End of Childhood, which will be published in March by Milkweed Editions.

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. After college I lived in New York City; then in Houston, Texas; then in Kansas City, Missouri for twelve years before I moved with my family to Denver, Colorado, in 2014. I teach at the University of Colorado Denver and edit the literary journal Copper Nickel.

The End of Childhood is my sixth poetry collection. It’s a book that focuses on the experience of watching my children grow up, as well as on what their childhoods teach me about my own childhood. This is, I think, one of the great gifts of being a parent—the work of raising children offers a significantly enlarged understanding of one’s own life. I grew up in the late period of the cold war, while my children have grown up in a highly divided America and during the Covid pandemic. With these things in mind, the book considers how our individual stories both do and don’t make regular contact with the larger sociopolitical and historical narratives that surround us.

The poem I’m going to read is called “On Childhood.” It’s in six short sections—which means it’s basically six brief snapshots of childhood—both my children’s and my own as I view it from the vantage of middle age and fatherhood. As I read the poem, I’ll simply read the numbers of the sections to indicate that the poem is moving into a new section. If you like, you can think of each section as similar to a brief scene in a film—one that fades into view, then fades out; and then the next one fades in, then out.

On Childhood

1
My daughter has slid down in the bath

so that just the island of her face
breaks the surface—

and when she holds in her breath
her body suspends
touching nothing

I say can you hear me
and she nods from her distance

I say are you ready to come out—
Not yet

2
Inside this larger world
the world of children

is one of such rapidly
shifting allegiances—

now: the adorable predators
now: the adorable prey

3
My childhood became in the end
not a coherent narrative

or even really
a series of flashing images

but simply a feeling—
as though all that time

is a bolt of material
sunk in a basin of dye

4
Childhood is not

as I had thought
the thicket of light back at the entrance

but the wind still blowing
invisibly toward me

through it

5
My children: an encompassing wall
I cannot see over—

such a cramped vantage—

and if that wall collapsed
it would reach out beyond itself

to cover everything

6
In a small train station
in a foreign country

I sat in a molded plastic chair
watching my son

expand his loops
of exploration—

he found a locked door
halfway up the narrow hall

and such was his ignorance

of my place in the world
that he came back

and asked for my keys

 I’m Wayne Miller. Thanks for listening.

POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST AND FEATURED POET

WAYNE MILLER (b. 1976) is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The End of Childhood (Milkweed Editions, 2025). His awards include the Rilke Prize, two Colorado Book Awards, a Pushcart Prize, an NEA Translation Fellowship, six awards from the Poetry Society of America, and a Fulbright to Northern Ireland. He has co-translated two books by the Albanian writer Moikom Zeqo—most recently Zodiac (Zephyr Press, 2015)—and he has co-edited three books, most recently Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century (Milkweed Editions, 2016). He lives in Denver, where he teaches at the University of Colorado Denver and edits the journal Copper Nickel.