Telephone Repairman -- Joseph Millar

(Poem #108)Telephone Repairman All morning in the February light he has been mending cable,  splicing the pairs of wires together according to their colors,  white-blue to white-blue violet-slate to violet-slate,  in the warehouse attic by the river.  When he is finished the messages will flow along the line:  thank you for the gift,  please come to the baptism,  the bill is now past due:  voices that flicker and gleam back and forth across the tracer-colored wires.  We live so much of our lives without telling anyone,  going out before dawn,  working all day by ourselves,  shaking our heads in silence at the news on the radio.  He thinks of the many signals flying in the air around him the syllables fluttering,  saying please love me,  from continent to continent over the curve of the earth. -- Joseph Millar