Spring on Lick Creek

   Yes, it is January 2010, and I'm think about spring, and I remember the springs while we were living in beautiful Tennessee. It was the time of year the children came out of hibernation. The boys built rafts and tried to float down Lick Creek to Lake Barkley. To hide their efforts they often tied their sister and another boy's little brother to water pipes in the basement, to keep them from seeing just what was going on! The little ones thought they were the heroes of some grand game, until they got hungry! Just a few of the many things that I learned—later in life—concerning the—colorful, fraught with danger—adventures of my daring boys .

If I had known what they were up to, this picture is just the way I would have seen it, and I am sure this is the way they thought it was on Lick Creek in those spring days of ,"Were out of the house, what can we do next?"!

Spring on Lick Creek

When the sunshine kisses a tender cheek
Lazy days are a comin’ to old Lick creek
Crickets start chirping
Like a rocking band
Tree frogs a hollerin’
All over the land


Willow flies cover all
A fuzzy sight
Spring a risin’ on a warm midnight
Chillin’ start playing
In sweet morning dew
Puppies a scampering
Huntin’ a chew


Love is a flyin’ on the perfumed air
Wild petals driftin’ a top o curly hair
Seems like the world
Is a baby born
Lick Creek a bubbling
On a new day’s morn


Come on home it seems to beckon
Be following that stony stream I recon
Watercress a floatin’
Near the diving rock
A memory makin’ spring
On a fishing dock


How much better can life be
Than a celebratin’ spring
With old Lick Creek
a waiting for me
In the lazy little town of
Dover, Tennessee



R.B.Riddle 2007