The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Elise Hempel
The Call
I think about it still, that night soon after
my grandmother died, the late ring, my grandfather calling from his dimmed house in the city, for the first time alone in his own kitchen, confused, his voice I’d never heard before on the phone or speaking more than a few brief practical words, a weekend greeting, trembling now with uncertainty, asking how long to leave the pizza in, what temperature. And how it must have seemed to him as strange
to find and dial my number, hear himself not doling some advice, some simple adage, but asking me what to do and if by chance I’d come and eat with him, no facts, just his frail questions through the receiver, thirty years of distance. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |