The bountiful days of summer,
Reaching to pull the shades of autumn.
While the tie back curtains,
Lay open to the sun’s longer rays.
Each second of warmth,
Matters to all who awaken.
Deep breaths and smiles,
Cherishing the memories.
Longer days, car rides, wet feet and towels.
Leaves falling and landing,
Like post-it notes on green grass,
Each a reminder of times spent,
And what to enjoy about days ahead.
(C) Rick Wyman 10, 17, 2023
Night fell hours ago.
I watched and searched for the moon.
It lay behind a layer of clouds,
Giving some light,
As if to nod a shy hello.
I recognized its welcoming acknowledgement to my gaze.
My smile was genuine,
As it always is,
While greeting a friendly warmth.
I miss the moon when it shrinks and disappears,
Too late for me to join its company.
I look forward to our meeting next time it shows
A happy light on my horizon.
(c) Rick Wyman 12:47 am Saturday
Waiting for healing to catch up to my wishes.
Spending long days breathing slow and shallow,
Recalling days before the painful emergency.
Today I want to gain years beyond what some expect.
This life I have been saving, is to share,
With the family we made from love.
Prayers for decades together,
Holding hands each morning with God listening.
Forever has a whole new meaning.
© Rick Wyman 7/19/2021
Tiny snow pellets bouncing off my sleeve,
And sitting on my glove.
I recall their presence from years before.
They coax a small smile on my lips,
While I enjoy their gentle bounce.
If I were a child again,
I would not enjoy them more.
Today is as good as then,
As I need the smile even more.
It is important that my heart be lifted,
From the worries I bear.
My youth taught me,
That life keeps coming together,
With its unexpected joys.
Rick Wyman
© November, 2020
The tunes we built in our heads
Are those we’ve played over and over.
The creation of the negative images,
Born from words of others we’ve fended off,
Snuck back into our heads,
And hid away,
Camouflaged, in Continue reading
Though death has sought me
Several times at least.
I’ve prevailed as my will has possessed my strength
I’ve not let death decide my end,
While my decisions, and God
Have provided me a home on earth.
The distance to heaven is but a blink or Continue reading
Spring flowers push their way through to see the sun,
Babies push their way through to see the faces of love.
Sharing warmth and creating beauty.
Everyone means something to someone.
A garden of many blossoms, tended by one,
Creates a place to admire.
A comforting face, seen by many,
Assures that beauty comes from within.
Sharing self, to make another blossom,
Brings the lives of many, out into the light.
(c) Rick Wyman
There are rare times people today have memories of actually meeting a person who was born in the last third of the 19th century. Those people are pretty much gone these days. I do however, recall one such person in my lifetime. When I was a youngster, Mr. Biggie lived next door to our family on the dirt road in the Cavendish Gulf. His front field stone steps were lined with smooth egg shaped stones his late wife had collected from various river beds. Mr. Biggie was the person who connected our family to the previous century. Knowing him was also a front row seat to the memories and stories of a man who was living in a time before most modern conveniences.
Mr. Biggie was basically a quiet neighbor. He rarely ever stopped by our house and when he did he usually just stood in the driveway to talk to my folks briefly. He didn’t have a phone so he wasn’t someone to bother people asking favors. I couldn’t tell you if he ever even used a phone. His relatives only stopped by once in a great while in the summer, and usually for just a short visit. I often went to his house to ask him if he needed anything, like shoveling his roof and steps.
I spent hours listening to Mr. Biggie talk about what it was like when he was young. At 14, he had a job working on a logging crew, and back then, they used horses for help with work and for transportation. In this case the horses skidded the logs out of the woods. One of his jobs was to actually stand on the cut logs and drive the horses as they pulled them along the rough ground. One day while working, Continue reading
I don’t want to sit around, mixing my emotions.
I need to settle down, with my long days of devotion.
It’s been a life of watching, my ambitions reflecting,
Back into my eyes, too much time rejecting.
Sure to make myself smile, before this time is over.
I’m spending my next quite a while, making tea from clover.
There are people who make my heart’s desire
Satisfied as a cold man beside a roaring fire.
The chills I feel as I Continue reading
I have always had a therapeutic relationship with poetry and song lyrics. Writing free verse poetry helps me work through loneliness, worries, and tell my story creatively. My thoughts were always being written on paper, even as far back as when I just began to write. When I was in High School, writing seemed to help me better relate to the world and people around me. I had a stressful home life, and mostly kept to myself. I felt writing was a way to share a little about me with others. I read poems to friends, sang songs with lyrics I’d written, and was a self-taught guitar player.
My senior year in high school, a special teacher who taught business and typing, recognized that I had a passion for writing poetry. I sat in his class typing my poems while I was supposed to be typing a sentence over and over for a time and accuracy test. It was something like, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”
Noticing that I was not following the assignment, he told me I needed to do the time test to pass the class. I replied, “I took this class to learn how to type and I can type now.” I wasn’t as concerned about the grade. I was typing about 35 words per minute, which I thought was pretty good for a recent beginner. Rather than flunk me, he went to the school board to get permission to pass me if I could type the required words per minute, even though I was not typing the prescribed lessons. They gave him the permission, and he made a template and had the whole class type my poems. I didn’t know it, but he had a plan in mind, and gave me a priceless addition to my education. My classmates typed inside the borders of the template so it would all be in a uniform fashion. I remember feeling as though this teacher was the first person to give me a chance to be creative and pursue my personal interests, and it helped that the class seemed to enjoy reading and retyping my work.
The teacher and I discussed the possibility of having this collection turned into Continue reading
mind salvage 