The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

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Phone is Ringing

My mother called from D.C., 1942–
in training for an overseas State Department
post in wartime Helsinki.

She was excited. She learned how
to use a rotary phone - a thing of which
she had never heard.

So she dialed up a speck of Mid-American
prairie, called her mother and uncle direct
at the old homestead shack, four years
before telephone lines would arrive.

Excited to tell of her mastery of the rotary,
she called her sister who drove to Los Angeles
to commence life with her new husband.
But they must not have arrived yet.

She tried many times to call me, but I wouldn’t
be born for another nine years. Who knows, though –
my cell phone is ringing now. It rings forever.

Last night Dad called to ask that if Mom calls,
tell her that he has gone on ahead.


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For some reason this poem just brought up the song "Calling all Angels". 1942, the year I was born--we know what was ahead. We need the wisdom of those who lived through it--we need the wisdom born of experience. Those are the terms in which I immediately saw this poem. But, of course it reads as well in personal terms. They keep calling us. When I slice onions I silently appologize to my ex husband for refusing to use onions when I cooked beef roasts. He is unforgiving. I ask my father if there was something I could have done.

And then there is the theme in your poem of the inability to make contact and that is the most poignant aspect Whatever those who have gone on before have learned is so often lost on those who need to hear their truth the most.

Thanks Indar. Yes - they keep calling us. I love your onions comment - there is a poem in that, you know.


T

Love this Tracy. 
Fascinating, curious and so engaging...has a real sci-fi feel to it.
And strangely, it made me think of how well we survived without any convenient means of communicating...or
maybe what I was really thinking was, the easier it is to communicate the less we actually do!