Awakening to a morning light,
the night again forgets its ignorance
where the dailiness of being
is a full occupation.
The wall clock comprehends
fifty years ago more vividly
than anything today
which it must display.
But even more than this,
I pity that mortal light
which selects its images only
to show us what it knows,
but will not allow
us back into the darkness
to create ourselves
like once the morning would.
Paul Dickey lives in Omaha, NE but he wrote poetry in Wichita, Kansas in the 1970’s. He published then in Kansas Quarterly, Mikrokomos, Nimrod, Karamu, and Quartet. Now in 2024 after many years, Dickey has now published for his early poems with a new book, I Forget I Live Alone.