Phone Calls

The phone sits mostly silent.
When it rings, it surprises me.
Usually I have to search for it.

Buried under papers, books,
it rings insistently,
demanding to be answered.

I consider it,
contemplate, wonder
who may be calling,

then pick up the receiver
and say “hello.”

Sometimes, someone
is trying to cajole me
into parting with my money.

Sometimes my son or my daughter
with worries or concerns or their own;
a sister with her latest news;
a brother bragging about a grandchild.

Always, always, a connection
waiting to happen.

Memories of New Connections

I remember the excitement of our first phone – the black box on the wall meant leaving total isolation behind.
Out in the country, the phone lines strung along wooded gravel roads connect far-strewn houses to each other.
Ten neighbors separated by acres of dense dark woods now come together by black strings.
Excitedly, anxiously, we wait to hear our own special ring – the announcement that someone is calling us. We hear different rings, a single, a long, and combinations which tell who is being sought.
At times, we pick up the receiver, as quiet as a cold war spy, to listen, guiltily,  to a neighbor’s latest story or lament, knowing they listen to us, too.

— Phyllis Knowles