A Door Just Opened in a Mind by Paul Dickey

For Emily / Occupation: At Home

No one knew doors better than her,

perhaps a piano in a parlor –

on the other side.

Beyond the shadows of a hallway,

house visitors sat in a corner –

or with her, they had

conversation behind one –

partially closed.

A Door just opened on a street.

Noon – is the hinge of Day.

The Heart has many Doors.

As tourists to the homestead now,

we see the grand portal –

neither inner nor outer;

let’s say both.

And after all the years,

beyond the shadows –

of a hallway & all its ecstasy

& circumference, through this door.

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Paul Dickey won the 2015 Master Poet award from the Nebraska Arts Council. Paul Dickey's first full length poetry manuscript They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January, 2011. His poetry and flash have appeared in Verse Daily, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Southern Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Pleaides, 32Poems, Bellevue Literary Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other online and print publications. A second book, Wires Over the Homeplace was published by Pinyon Publishing in October, 2013.