PATTY DICKSON - POEMS

Author of the novel Finding the Raven, Patty Dickson Pieczka found her start in writing poetry. Her second book, Painting the Egret's Echo, won the Library of Poetry Book Award from Bitter Oleander Press. Other books are Lacing Through Time and Word Paintings. Winner of the ISPS, Francis Locke Memorial, and Maria Faust Sonnet Contests, she has contributed to over 50 literary journals. A native of Evanston, Patty graduated from SIU and currently lives in Carbondale. 

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                              GROWING OLD TOGETHER
 

If you'll be a splintered guitar
blossoming its song to the sky,
I'll be contentment that curls
beside drums of dissonance
and lulls them into silence.
 
If you'll be the lip of the lake,
your sand molded into the shape of dance,
I'll be clinking bracelets,
swirls of red skirts,
the fragrance of kiwis.
 
If I am deep satin ripples
shimmering the evening sky,
would you be a heat mirage?
A twitch of leaf? The day
winging from its crimson perch?
 
And if a handprint stops the wind
and crows swarm, plucking dreams
from the dark, I'll be a wild red rose
thorning its way through tooth and stone
to lift you up my body's trellis.
 


                                         MISPLACED
 


As the clock wanders
its senseless circle,
my father asks who I am.
 
My name becomes
the wrong shape,
a broken song,
its swollen syllables
thick on my tongue.
 
Letters drop from my mouth
to my lap, surprising
as fallen teeth.
 
My voice is a goat's bleat.
My voice is carved from ash.
My voice summons crickets and moths.
 
The years collide
and slip into
my father's shirt pocket.
 
He looks at me
through confused eyes,
the frayed air
creased and yellowed
as an old photograph.


                                     THE NIGHT SKY
 
                                         “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in                                              our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the                                                     interiors of  collapsing stars.”
                                                                                                    Carl Sagan


Open your shutters and find
the first star. Drink it in
until your breath glows
and your veins silver.
 
Feel the tiny lanterns
swirling within you
then open your ribs,
and show the world your soul.
 
Kisses will be tossed,
rocks thrown. Many
people will never realize
they are of the same source,
the same blood,
 
the same liquid moon
that dreams you across the length
of the pond and sees
the shine in your eyes,
your rippling hair.
 
When dirt fills the sky,
its last star shoveled over,
grow small enough
to slip into a thought
and become the dream.



                                                 VISIONS
 

We live in houses built of dust and smoke.
Rattlesnakes with eggs in their mouths
 
coil at our feet. A hungry wolf breaks the light
of morning, leaves us his hollow song.
 
I split a stone and see a dead ocean,
a crumbling river, showers of poison,
 
split a stone and hear the earth's breath,
plumes of gray gasping in yellow air.
 
The desert is a mound of feathers,
the pond a withered face.
 
The future rumbles, but voices are mute.
Nighttime gnaws the bones of day.



               JOHN MATHIAS WALKS HOME TO GREENVILLE — 1865
 
​
My bones move without me;
I trail behind,
a skeleton's shadow.
 
All my friends are dead,
my boots murdered
in a Virginia field.
 
Every horse
and gut-shot tree
is soaked in blood. Always  
 
there when I close my eyes—--
this deep red stain
of the devil's baptism.
 
He steals souls,
eats our lives,
picks his teeth with our bones.
 
I hunger for sacred
water, for the sweet melt
of a mattress,
 
for crumbs of holy bread
to mend the rips
in this walking scarecrow.