Publishing the Poems

Publishing the Poems

Arthur was a poet. When he was a child, he had discovered a wonderful little spot by the river. It consisted of an odd outcrop of rock and a hollow in an eternal tangle of brambles, with some crooked trees leaning above. He used it regularly for sulking and running away from home. Later, he brought friends there and they smoked cigarettes. It was a mistake, but life’s lazy drift took care of things and he had the place to himself again by the time his friends dashed off to colleges, jobs, and wives. Now, almost thirty, he used it for his poetry, scratching disconnected images in his notebook, tearing out the pages, and dropping them into the water. From time to time a clutch of sodden verses would surface among the batty old fishermen down by River Bend, and they tacked some of them up in the hut where they gutted their fish. Nobody else ever saw them. Arthur dedicated each one to the girls in the town.

—Jack Granath

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