Thomas Poteet

Tom is pictured with some of his closest friends.

Though Tom has worked the majority of his life, he describes himself as an off-the-chart introvert. He has started his day with prayer for most of his life . . . but, a few decades ago, Tom started getting up extra early and adding writing to his prayer time. He began to pray . . . then to write what he was praying and write what was going through his mind while praying. Tom found this time to be an extremely important time of his day. The time gave him energy. There was also an element of excitement to the creation of a poem.

Tom's poems have been stashed away for years . . . in folders by the year written. He now keeps hard and soft copies. He refers to them often . . . they still give him strength. But now that Tom is retired, he has a little more time to organize and publish. He put together a book of poems many years ago, entitled, "Sing A New Psalm". He placed a poem for each day of the year; the idea being that one could pick up the book each day and read a poem that either praised our Heavenly Father, asked Him for help or forgiveness, or questioned why we had moved so far from Him in our journey.

When Tom decided to retire, he promised himself and our Father that he would put his poems onto a website. He was fortunate to find the URL www.singanewpsalm.com not to have an owner . . . so he bought that URL; though he now posts his daily poems to two google+ accounts mentioned below. It gives Tom pleasure to give his poems to those in need.

Tom has also begun organizing his poetry for other smaller books of poetry. The first book, about grief, entitled "The Winds of Change" is the struggle of losing Tom's dad at a time when he truly needed him.

Since Tom published "The Winds of Change", he has also published his oldest manuscript, written in the 1980's. He wrote "Pieces of the Puzzle" as a tribute to Nan's nephew Michael. Michael died at a very early age; but, in that short time, Michael taught Tom a great deal about faith. He remains a truly remarkable little boy in his mind. Then Tom published the book version of his "Sing A New Psalm". Next came a book of his non-religious poems, aptly named "For A Season - The Other Poems". Then came "Musings - Questions and Observations", a book of his questions and observations about how we have mostly gotten religion wrong.

Tom has now discontinued posting to www.singanewpsalm.com and has begun posting a daily poem to google.com/+tompoteet and google.com/+Singanewpsalm. These are free . . . and sometimes the best things in life are free.