I asked my high school English teacher, Father Elliot, how I could improve my literary style. He told me to be quiet, to keep my hands out from under my knees, and to stay after school to write for the Roger Bacon Yearbook. I mostly heeded that advice, taking to heart his pejorative urging, "Write what you know." Junior year an infatuation died potato-famine-like and Phoenix-like I climbed from the ashes to a full-time, long-term relationship promising roses and romance. Puppy-loved Ann Honnert tipped me over but kindly poured me out and back into the dating teacup with Kathy Eder. I went from desolate and dateless to my arm around this brunette in the backseat of a '56 Chevy en route to McAuley's Junior Prom. A bumpy, pot-holed start eventually smoothed to a lengthy relationship spawning an abundance of inspiration for my creative soul. Thus, the big reveal of the following pages unfolds--a rescued raft of poems written from what I felt and what I knew about myself and the lovely young girl who became the love of my life, Kay Fahey. A metered, rhyming name like that had to be glorified in iambic pentameter. Poems followed Tom and Kay from high school, through college, into marriage and our early life together. They bear no resemblance to literary excellence, but they are genuinely a reflection of heartfelt emotions. Father Elliot said to write what I know. Love for Kay is what I felt, what I knew. Blame it on him, but enjoy it anyway. No Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning are my wife and me; but there are some yellowed, dog-eared testaments to the elegiac emotions of each being both inspiration and inspired. The next few pages offer proof that the bard's muse tickled Kay's imagination as well as mine. Enjoy the work of the trained dietician of the couple, proving that love knows no bounds to the writing of a good verse.
