Near the DeSoto Bend Wildlife Refuge

by Paul Dickey

Just this week, the weather has turned.
At the refuge, the few remaining snow geese
scatter at a handclap. Good-byes are silly.
Movement is an awkward flutter of wings.

Wind flaps the doors at the Dairy Delight,
the shelter that once was an Ace Hardware.
Farmers’ sons drive south to Omaha for nails
and girls. Their leaving lets no sound stay,

although some words dawdle
and always mean to come home soon.

                 Previously published in Nebraska Life, Jan/Feb 2006

Happiness and Sadness You Will Not Have With You Always

However big you are today, tonight you will be nothing.
The moon and stars will defeat you in a simple game
of chess, though you tell them — once you
had a lovely wife and great wealth. From the cellar,
you cannot return. Thieves have turned the wine
into water. Flashlights look for you in tunnels.
Voices call out your name, even echo for a time
in stadiums, but you have lost any claim to speech
or hearing. Though small you are tonight, tomorrow
you will have everything. Raindrops will make
room for you between the cobblestones of the avenues.

                 Previously published in Plainsongs, Fall 2005

How to Decorate a Closet

You must first throw out the good clothes
that allow yourself to be seen in public,
the shopping bags that still could be
associated with objects of marketable value.
Folded, they lean against the wall
or the vacuum like something is there.
Give away anything that someday someone
accidentally may find. You will require space.

Express your style largely as in a ballroom,
as though the house could afford ballrooms:
golden, flowing curtains, Steinways,
murals, white furniture, plush carpets.
Maybe you will fall asleep here, have dreams
you will not allow yourself to wake from,
allow yourself ever to remember, or wonder
if you could have made in them other choices.

Find a fashion that will satisfy you,
even your most rebellious spirit, one not
for sharing with spouses or murderers.
Let it contain everything you can’t
or won’t explain even to close walls.
This is where amateurs like you and I hang
our masterpiece. Close the door tighter.
Yet you will never be alone.

                 Previously published in Softblow, June 2011

BIO

Paul Dickey has appeared recently in Plume, The Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, I-70 Review, Plainsongs, failbetter.com, and Apple Valley Review. His poetry volume, Anti-Realism in Shadows and Suppertime, and a poetry chapbook, A Reading of Dali (Likely Misunderstood) Which at Twenty Meters Becomes This Poet’s Self-portrait, were released in 2022.