On Thanksgiving day of 2004
she made one transatlantic phone call.
Her mother answered and shouted because she was so excited.
Kevin's on the cell phone, calling from Durham,
she explained. It's the first time we've heard in months.
Here, let me hold the phones up to one another
and maybe you two can shout through to each other.
The resulting static hiss was loud enough
to startle Thug, the Chinese security guard
and make her whip the phone away from her head.
Mom, what were you thinking? That wasn't going to work.
Honey, I'm sorry, I thought
it would be nice if, just this once,
you two could speak to one another on a holiday.
* * *
What's in My Journal
William Stafford
Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment