by Wesley Sims

Dream and dreamer. First child 
and first male offspring for his parents 
after that awful Civil War, a time that 
at its ending, like a marauding reaper,
snatched three children from their home, 
including the youngest boy.
Now the seed of a new promise—another son,
a fresh start, a better life, a period of healing, 
of hope and joy, sunshine after a raging storm.

He walked in his father’s shadow, 
absorbed his teaching, his faith, his devotion. 
Forty years, a fulness of time, not of wandering
but of putting down roots, of growing and sharing, 
of learning the Word, and preaching the Word.
Ministered at his home church for forty years.
Clergyman, Sunday School teacher, husband, parent, friend. 
A son with whom his father felt pleased and blessed.

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Wesley Sims has published three chapbooks of poetry: When Night Comes, 2013; Taste of Change, 2019; and A Pocketful of Little Poems, 2020. He has had poems nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Artemis Journal, Connecticut Review, G.W. Review, Liquid Imagination, Plum Tree Tavern, Quill and Parchment, Poem, Poetry Quarterly, Time of Singing, Bewildering Stories, and numerous others.