By: Paul Dickey

Near the Creek / Childhood Sweethearts /
The Poem that Made No Sense

(I am just saying some words, and all of a sudden I am
writing this poem or starting up a new conversation
you know what it is with me It is the things you can’t cope
with which makes you want to stay with you and never
lose your job I want you to understand but it is okay
if you can’t) It started with me when I was little in Indiana
and the big boys owned the hills You had rocks to play
with near the creeks There was one near my house I think
or maybe it was your house though We didn’t know
each other then but I had a picture of you playing in the snow
in Vermont or Washington or New Hampshire that year
your dad moved you around so much I wanted you to stop
by Indiana sometime on your way to wherever you were going
Perhaps you did I was playing baseball in the city park
two blocks away Do you remember how we used to stack
dishes up high on the table and we would say we were married
if we pulled the table cloth out real real quick the dinner plates
did not crash then one rainy day we learned we could play
all day if we cheated and used plastic Did you like Vermont
New Hampshire and what was that other state Maryland
You would have liked Indiana I stayed up late nights
listening to cicadas near the creek at least Mom called them
that and catching fireflies have I ever told you about
the fireflies in Indiana They are lights and if you
have a creek near your house They stay all night
You live in my. house I live in your house until
we don’t know where to go home where just in the next room
in Vermont you read about fireflies in a magazine
if you had dropped by Indiana I should have shown you

In Simply Praise

The perfect poem will have
no adjectives. If it speaks of love,
there will be only two images.
If it is war, a million.

The critics, consoles us
like insurance, to what we love.
The fire itself promises that
we will never return our home.

The Game of Hearts

What is dealt you, you can’t refuse.
You call what you do with it “learning
to live with yourself.” It is not
that lifetime hand we pick up our cards
hoping to find, nor is it a hand that you
are ready to play. Your work is clear,
the hand is too good to avoid losses.

From yourself, there is no vacation,
no absences allowed, no retirement.
But what you like about the game of hearts,
there is one chance to make your hand
what it takes to win, you say, and pick out
three low cards, and pass them to the left.

###

Paul Dickey now lives in Omaha, NE and he is old, but he wrote poetry once in the 1970’s and studied creative writing at Wichita State University. At that time, he published Kansas Quarterly, Mikrokomos, Nimrod, Karamu, and Quartet. Dickey has now published these poems with a book, I Forget I Live Alone.