The Phone Call

by Tom Peters

10-31-21

Waiting for a phone call, going about my daily life

A lovely life indeed, with technology on my side

Spam callers are silently batted away

Questionable and untimely calls are screened

I don’t wait on Sundays for calls I must say

From my dear grown children back east

Blessed indeed most Sundays the three calls

Chris resting on his only day off watching football

Jeannie chronicles her long bike rides and job search

Justin touts his children’s latest accomplishments

All Sunday Michigan calls end in ‘love you Dad’

What call am I waiting for? My nine siblings?

No, I’m the official call initiator

If not during the year, always on their birthdays

Am I waiting for a call from my 7 or 8 closest friends?

No, I can count on 2 or 3 to ring my phone occasionally

I’ll call the others every month or so it seems

Oh but the call that would triple my heart rate

May or may not ever cross the airways

From the Texas plains to the LA basin

The platoon-mate who called me ‘Amigo’

Saved my life in a fierce deadly battle

Cultivated a close friendship in hell

Then becoming a man, I loved

A dear sweet man I loved

Yet knew so little about

He sent a letter from Ft Hood

I’m a white guy, union job

He’s a black man returning with a bronze star

To the Lone Star state

Not replying, a painful regret

Lasting a disrespectful forty-six years

In 2016 an address from the Internet

I package my recently written memoir

a letter of apology with my phone number

Whether he read it or not, he never dials my number

Fifty-one years pass I have his phone number

I call, no answer….call no answer, call no answer