He had been battling cancer.

No service is planned. Arrangements will be handled by Memory Gardens Mortuary, Medford.

A former Army captain and decorated veteran, Mason moved back to Ashland last year after living there earlier and then being away for several years.

He is the author of three books of poetry: "Johnny’s Song" (1986), "Warrior for Peace" (1988) and "The Human Being — A Warrior’s Journey Toward Peace and Mutual Healing" (1990).

His poem "The Wall Within" was delivered at the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., 1984 and read into the Congressional Record the same year.

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Mason’s poems mix plain-spoken declarations of feeling and startling metaphors with a stream-of-consciousness style and the rhythms of everyday speech.

Mason’s poem "The Wall Within" begins like this:

Most real men/ hanging tough/ in their early forties/ would like the rest of us to think/ they could really handle one more war/ and two more women./ But I know better./ You have no more lies to tell./ I have no more dreams to believe.

He wrote on an old Underwood typewriter, often completing a poem in a single sitting.

Whatever came out, he said, was the poem. He didn’t re-write.

"Johnny’s Song" had a first printing of 35,000, an almost unheard of number for a book of poetry.

He co-wrote "Moths and Violets," a volume of love poems published in 1974.

Mason came home from Vietnam in 1967. Although he said he had no drug or alcohol problems, he blamed post-traumatic stress disorder for the breakup of his marriage a year later. He once said the trauma of war is "like an elephant on your nose."

Mason’s friends held a poetry event for him in September at Stage Works in Ashland. Actors from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and others read from his work, and proceeds were given to a group that helps veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.