A Poem

Photo taken September 2010, Washington State

This poem struck me with its simple beauty of witnessing everyday life; the stories that take place in our lives in between the stories we tell.  I find it serendipitous that often, when I don't know how to tell my own story, I often find a poem to tell it for me. 

Telephone Repairman

By Joseph Millar

All morning in the February light
he has been mending cable, splicing the pairs of wires together
according to their colors,
white-blue to white-blue
violet-slate to violet-slate, in the warehouse attic by the river.

When he is finished
the messages will flow along the line:
thank you for the gift, please come to the baptism,
the bill is now past due:
voices that flicker and gleam back and forth
across the tracer-colored wires.

We live so much of our lives
without telling anyone, going out before dawn,
working all day by ourselves,
shaking our heads in silence
at the news on the radio.
He thinks of the many signals
flying in the air around him
the syllables fluttering,
saying please love me, from continent to continent
over the curve of the earth.