Wind Phone

I walked across grass to a phone the didn’t work

inside a booth fixed to a tree. A song

sparrow unheard until I lifted the phone’s receiver.

Warbling vireo. What did I expect?

My father’s voice. His laughter, the way

he’d throw back his head, close his eyes.

Maybe I expected the sound of a tsunami,

rushing over buildings and sweeping them away,

or a dial tone, or sorry I can’t come to the phone

right now, but leave your name and number

and a detailed what did I expect when I took

the black receiver out of it’s cradle, spoke

into the black mouthpiece perforated with a hundred

holes, as if a tiny mole had burrowed there?

I said hello. I said dad. I wanted to break

the silence. I told him things the dead

might know - how could they know? -

that his grandson had a child

of his own, but this was about my father

and me, how close we were

to tears when he told me what it meant, that letter.

He was elderly then, one hand on the dining

room table. It was his birthday. And after that

no sound. Smell of sun-warmed cedar, the warbling

vireo again, then a red-winged blackbird

near the willow, the pond with a scribble of pale

green pollen on its surface, invisible from here.

My friend in an Adirondack chair, drift of twinflowers

at her feet as she lifted into the air. Unseen.

No sound. I spoke to the dust motes in the day’s sparkle,

I love you I love you I said what I wanted

because who could hear the red-winged blackbird?

I put the receiver back in its cradle. It clunked.

Goodbye I said or did not say. Did I say it? Goodbye.

with the permission of:

Visitor Anne Simpson, June 2024 (recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize-2004)