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.
By David Selzer