“Wind Phone”

I had heard tales of a wind phone

Somewhere in Japan

Talk to your dead loved

They said

I bought a plane ticket

I flew on the wind

I found the wind phone

It was somewhere in Japan

I waited in the queue

My turn finally came

I approached the booth with trepidation

It was white

That is to say the booth was dreadful white

And there was a small neatly organized table

Organized in precision in only the way a small Japanese table could be

Upon it was a phone

Black and dull

What was once shiny glossy

Passed through thousands upon thousands of hands

Hand to ear

Mouth to word

Word to air

Not ears…

Wind phone!

Talk to your dead loved

They said

Only, I chose differently

I didn’t talk to my Father

Dead these eight years

I didn’t talk to my Mother

Dead these twelve years

I didn’t even speak to the baby we lost between my first son and my first daughter

Perhaps, his name was Hieronymus

No, I spoke to no dead loved

But, I put my words into the wind phone

Hoping the wind would find the ears of my second son, Paul

He is minimally verbal

But, luckily for us, more verbal than most

I try to persuade the wind with my silver tongue

Persuade it to unlock the mystery of my second son

Who often releases words on the wind,

Hoping those words unlock some type of understanding between us

As I look out over a Japanese valley

The wind carries my words away

Not to be heard,

Nor understood

The wind phone holds me silent

As I wait for a connection

Whether my second son was there

Or ten thousand miles away,

Our words are carried over the wind

And, pass us by.

Blowing fierce into the stratosphere

Carrying our DNA back to the stars that we came from

Out to somewhere where our dead loved

Are rejoined in a Big Bang connection

As I hung up the phone

I looked backward at the queue,

And felt shame for my wind blasphemy

I had to try

Before I myself become dead loved

I hope they can forgive me—

I hope Paul can forgive me—

I then thought to myself…

That maybe sometimes not being able to talk to your dead loved

Is not as bad as not being able to talk to your alive loved