The Pile of Scrap Paper
Once upon a time, in a land known as East Haven, CT.... I was 42 years old and single. Then, one December day I was on Facebook and noticed a post on the wall of an old high school friend. I read the post, and then the comments and a familiar old name caught my eye. His name was Martin Petry and he was someone I'd had a fond eye on in high school, back in the early 1980s. I sent him a Friend Request, which he accepted and we started talking online, and then on the phone. He was living in Rhode Island, just two hours from where I was. He was working as a tree-climber but his passion was writing. He told me he'd written a book and self-published it. I immediately went to Amazon, found and purchased it. The minute it arrived I tore into it. It was a Tom Clancy style book, with lots of twists and turns and fully developed characters. I was hooked. The title was Hard Justice: The Violation. It was the first book in what he'd planned on being a trilogy. The other books were mostly written, languishing on his computer. I told him how much I was enjoying the read, but that there were some... technical issues my eyes were getting bloody over. There was one sentence that went on for like... 34 pages. He told me he'd paid someone to edit it already and couldn't afford to pay to have it done again. So, I volunteered to clean it up and republish it at zero cost.
The editing took several weeks, but I was well pleased with the result. We chose a brand new cover design and re-released it through a different company with no money required up front. I booked him on a local TV show to talk about his books, and he gave me the second book draft to start tearing up. Over the course of weeks and months we developed an easy partnership. We were both going through some very difficult times in our personal lives and the partnership gave us each something to hang onto. The partnership and the writing. The writing, the editing, the cover designs, the attempts at marketing... We bonded over our mutual love of the written word, and somewhere along the line something unexpected happened. About a year later we were married.
He'd just come out of a second marriage and when he obtained his divorce during this whole process, he walked away with absolutely nothing except a couple of boxes of books and a couple of garbage bags full of clothes. One day he came to me with a pile of papers that had come from a box. Some of them were coffee-stained. Others were crinkled and crumpled. Every single one of them contained handwriting. I took the pile from his hands and started sifting through it. It was poetry. The man had written poetry. I was so excited I could hardly stand myself. I started organizing the scraps and pieces and transcribing them onto the computer and what I came up with was a wonderful compilation. I designed a cover and put those scraps into paperback. I called it By the Eyes of a Poet. It's still one of my very favorites.
He continued to write poetry on and off for the next few years. Every so often I'd find a handwritten little gift waiting for me when I got up in the morning. I present to you all one of those gifts....
The editing took several weeks, but I was well pleased with the result. We chose a brand new cover design and re-released it through a different company with no money required up front. I booked him on a local TV show to talk about his books, and he gave me the second book draft to start tearing up. Over the course of weeks and months we developed an easy partnership. We were both going through some very difficult times in our personal lives and the partnership gave us each something to hang onto. The partnership and the writing. The writing, the editing, the cover designs, the attempts at marketing... We bonded over our mutual love of the written word, and somewhere along the line something unexpected happened. About a year later we were married.
He'd just come out of a second marriage and when he obtained his divorce during this whole process, he walked away with absolutely nothing except a couple of boxes of books and a couple of garbage bags full of clothes. One day he came to me with a pile of papers that had come from a box. Some of them were coffee-stained. Others were crinkled and crumpled. Every single one of them contained handwriting. I took the pile from his hands and started sifting through it. It was poetry. The man had written poetry. I was so excited I could hardly stand myself. I started organizing the scraps and pieces and transcribing them onto the computer and what I came up with was a wonderful compilation. I designed a cover and put those scraps into paperback. I called it By the Eyes of a Poet. It's still one of my very favorites.
He continued to write poetry on and off for the next few years. Every so often I'd find a handwritten little gift waiting for me when I got up in the morning. I present to you all one of those gifts....
Days of Gray
Pre dawn hours
lying in heaven of a favorite bed the rain pounding down
while winds howled. Nor'easter fizzling out no sun coming for dawn
just grayness of the dim light hanging about.
November's Way weather ushering out warmth of Indian Summer previously here
passing of time we always endear.
Grayness of today is what comes to be sure lessening light
colder days ahead Precipitation not heard in frozen form
Roars of blustery wind keeping life hidden away dying of a season cyclically replayed.
Grayness or not through this lessening light we'll shine for ourselves later today
meeting with the future, when the world will be bright business today is for
a day next May.
Second book signing scheduled many more following
We'll take the gray any old day the seeds sewn last year grows close to a year
this winter coming when life is away words will be read, the words we scribed, will not hide
they were written
for those who are alive even through the gray and cold of this November told.
MH Petry
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