Mahon About Town Nantucket Blog

“Poems are much like trying to light a match in high winds.
Match after match keeps blowing out, failing to hold a flame.
Finally success. You are able to cup your hands around
the match fast enough to sustain the fire”
Del Wynn

INTRODUCTION BY JOHN SHEA

I met Del Wynn on Children’s Beach in the early summer of 1968. While poets may write about love at first sight, we had a friendship at first sight - I had been locked out of the boarding house where I was staying and had slept on the beach huddled against the bulkhead. Just after dawn, a tall, tanned, red-bearded guy appeared, tore off his shirt and dove into the water. When he emerged, I said hello and we started to chat. I told him my story, he told me his. We had both just arrived on the island for the first time and were working odd jobs and looking for adventure.

Over breakfast at the Downyflake, I sensed Del was a kindred spirit. I had just read Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” where a storm shipwrecks a group of men to face their fate on an enchanted island. As I came to know him better, I believed that Del and I and some others that became friends had been drawn to Nantucket in those days by an unseen hand to play out our interwoven destinies.

Of all my friends that first summer, Del was the one that I trusted to share such philosophical discussion. He was a spiritual seeker, unafraid to talk about metaphysical things; his Celtic mysticism was tempered by a healthy dose of practicality. He was both a poet and a carpenter, a dreamer with his feet on the ground. He was gifted in many ways and larger than life. On an island full of unique characters, he stood out; he was ruggedly handsome, strong and quick, with his red beard, long curly red-blonde hair, dancing blue eyes, big beaming grin, and a playful spirit that drew you in. Soon everyone knew Delmar Wynn, and everyone liked him. He fell in love with the island, and the island fell in love with him.

As years went by, it became clear to close friends that Del had a secret side. He was a poet. He was the only poet most people actually knew. If you were lucky, he would recite his poems to you, rattling off wild rhymes that left you spinning and laughing, or he would hand you one as a little gift. And you’d ask him “When did you write this?” And he’d say, “Oh, the other day in my van” or “Down at the beach.”

Delmar Wynn had a muse. This muse was a soft voice that spoke to him as he went about his days on Nantucket being a lover, a husband, a father, a worker, a friend. There are others that hear voices like this, but what set Del apart was that he really listened, he paid attention, and he took the time to write down what he heard. Sometimes these thoughts came to him as images, as lines with rhythm or words with rhyme, sometimes they came as prose musing, his “ACKfirmations”. He wrote about everything that touched him, about life, about death; this little book is a sampling.

If you never met Del Wynn, I’m sorry. You can meet him now. Imagine these poems being read to you by a real man of many parts: a prankster, an inventor; a faithful husband, a playful father who was still as much a boy as his sons; at the end, he was a gray-bearded master who taught us how to live a good life by his example. Before death took him from us too soon, before a tempest racked his hull with disease (ALS/Lou Gehrig’s) and drove him aground, Del left us with another legacy: he taught us how to die.

There was the night the island will not forget, the night the town turned out and filled The Muse, a local nightclub, in a benefit for Del and for his family. Hundreds showed up from all corners of our little rock, highborn and lowbred, movers and shakers, builders and bakers, and we danced and sang and let Del know we loved him. There he sat at the back, this dancing fighter, now in a wheelchair in his final round, a brave grin on his face that beamed back on one and all in fond farewell. He lived and died as he had written: “So be as the feather as you pass through your days, free from the worry of humdrum malaise; soar on the wings of the dreams you have nightly, but consider the feather, and take yourself lightly.”

John Shea
August 2006. Nantucket, Massachusetts

Del’s book, “Ack Poetically”, is available in both island bookstores. I’ll publish several of his poems over the next few weeks.

Halloween at the Rose & Crown, October 26, 2007.

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Halloween at the Rose & Crown, October 26, 2007.

If you see anyone you know in these photos, please forward the newsletter to them and encourage them to subscribe. To do so, go to the very end of the newsletter and click the “Forward email” link. (Forwarding through your email won’t work.)

All photographs are for sale. To buy, click on the photo. For more photos of this event and others, please go to the Mahon About Town Photo Pages.

Halloween at the Rose & Crown, October 26, 2007.

If you see anyone you know in these photos, please forward the newsletter to them and encourage them to subscribe. To do so, go to the very end of the newsletter and click the “Forward email” link. (Forwarding through your email won’t work.)

All photographs are for sale. To buy, click on the photo. For more photos of this event and others, please go to the Mahon About Town Photo Pages.