One-Sided Conversation
(Original Version)
A man in Japan
built a small booth
white with glass panels
on a grassy hill
overlooking the Pacific
with a disconnected
rotary phone inside
so he could talk
to his dead cousin,
whom he missed terribly.
His cousin died in 2010,
a year before the tsunami
damaged his town of Otsuchi.
So many were killed outright
then or never found, even now.
Calling it a wind phone,
he shares it with relatives
of the dead and the missing,
who perhaps are still out
there, somewhere.
He wanted his thoughts
once he said them out loud
to be carried on the wind.
Now people come from all over –
there can be a catharsis.
Some call to check in
or out of sheer longing.
I can’t hear him, but
he heard me, one woman
said about her son,
who’d died in a fire.
so I can go on living.
A psalm can be like this,
or a letter mailed to my
son and not returned.
One-Sided Conversation
(Re[en]visioned)
A man in Japan, a small booth overlooking
the Pacific, and a disconnected rotary phone.
He talks to his dead cousin, whom he misses terribly.
who died before the tsunami, in his town of Otsuchi.
Many were killed or never found. Calling into the wind,
he shares it with relatives of the dead and missing.
They’re out there, somewhere. Once he says his thoughts
out loud, he feels better. Now people come from over.
Some call to check in, or out of sheer curiosity.
I can’t hear him. He heard me, one said about her son,
who died in a fire. So I can go living. A psalm can be
like this, or a letter to my son that’s not been returned.
Copyright 2020 Bonnie Naradzay
Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared most recently in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, EPOCH, the Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, and Ekphrastic Review and are slated to appear in Kenyon Review Online, AGNI, and others. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.
30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review
