Talking With Dad About Phones
He remembers a thin phone,
an operator connecting parties.
Then the dial phone, wow,
you could actually call someone yourself.
A blocky black box
on a dining room end table.
Colors came in. But not for my Elmhurst,
Illinois dad. Too showy.
He has a cell phone, not a smart one,
asks about texting. He does know
OMG and LOL, tells me about a farm
family his parents knew near Pekin,
how lightning ran down the phone
making a fiery burst during Hazel.
Mrs. Cobb thought maybe it was God,
kept folding towels. At 91,
dad gets calls when I’m not around—
from his mother, his father, his wife,
all gone.
No ringing necessary. He listens closely.
Death never disconnects.
© Kenneth Pobo
Kenneth Pobo had a book of ekphrastic poems published in 2017 by Circling Rivers called Loplop in a Red City. Forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing House is a book of his prose poems called The Antlantis Hit Parade.
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