DOWN THE LINE

For Kira Somach

I have regular readers – some I have known

for years, others I will never meet –

on every continent except

Antarctica: a wonder not a boast!

One, an actual friend from long ago,

tells me, via email, that she often reads

some of my poems over the phone

to her father – she in Missouri,

he in Florida: to remind them

of his years working in England,

and her years here becoming a woman.

Sometimes she rehearses the reading

before she makes the call. I like to imagine

the words spoken down a telephone wire:

under the Mississipi, over

the Appalachians, around the Everglades –

but I guess the sounds are bounced from the sky,

across longitudes and latitudes

and a multiplicity of time zones,

which is no less extraordinary,

no less amazing, no less humbling – my words

sounding through the ether.