Before it Was on the Day by Paul Dickey

When did it first happen?

Surely if we had known in time,

we would have woven

the garden flowers

into a magical blanket,

to make sure every color

was absent that day.

And when did it happen again?

We had argued in many ways

the very once we had forgotten

would not return

to eavesdrop and breathe

on the children, or betray

the shadows again.

We said we’d be wise by then

and have planted large oaks

at the entry and exit

of the forest to prevent

the coming and going

of dark animals residing

there, all still unsatisfied.

---

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.