consider a payphone

consider a payphone
device once imperative,
relegated to communicative
impotence.

in my neighborhood there is a man who talks always on the payphone outside my house for hours in putrid summerevening heat
and in the bitterest of colds
he remains
and prattles on in Spanish
recounts the doings of his days
to lost friends in daydream places
and family members, long departed.
maybe him they can hear, but i know
that phone hasn’t worked in years.
yet he endures in his soliloquy
in tears, at times
to whatever passing ghost will listen-

i saw a woman

who passed a payphone dangling
from its medieval, spindly appendage

she

stopped
though engaged in citylikethings

and replaced it with the utmost of care
as if
restoring to life
an artifact, of some former, lesser
wellconnectedage.

just as everyman, richorpoor
fondles irresistibly its convivial trap door
hoping to find
the remains of some
previously forgotten treasure,
no matter

how small

the words left behind,
undialed.

This post is a poem.