The Kindness

posted Feb 16, 2016

So far                    this summer,
               the weather has been kind,
                                   I say.

My neighbor
                    in shirt sleeves
               says,                         "yup, so far"
                    and wags his head
toward the sky
               to give credit
where no credit has been earned,
               unlike his own shoveling
                    the snow for me for weeks
                    after my husband died.

               Months later now, I thank him
                    and he won't hear of it.
He says he did not know
                    one word to explain,
               or to console a body -
but who is really a person.
               He is that kind of man.
                    He is John next door
     and has always been
                              John next door,
               and to him I am
who I am.

                    I'm sure
we'll still talk occasionally
when the leaves or snow fall once again,
               both on his driveway
                              and mine.

Paul Dickey's first full length poetry manuscript They Say This Is How Death Came into the World was published by Mayapple Press. His second book, Wires Over the Homeplace was published in 2013 by Pinyon Publishing. His poetry and flash have appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Sentence, Mid-American Review, Laurel Review, Potomac Review, Pleaides, and Bellevue Literary Review, among many other online and print publications.

Dickey teaches philosophy in Omaha, NE.

We’ve published two more poems by Dickey: “Against Pots” and “How You Prove Anything and Everything.”