Long Distance

Tonight I am hungry for
someone to talk with. I walk
from room to room, feeling their
emptiness, the accountability of

my life. Even the cat thinks I've
gone mad. I wonder if all my friends
are dead or dying at the same time of night,
and in that skeptical stripped down

moment between one room and another,
the phone rings and there is life. I run
to answer it and no one is there, only
that voiceless sound I have often heard

when watching strangers pass each other
in the park, nodding in that ashamed and
failed kind of way, as if apologizing for
being alone, their hands thrust in pockets,

face down and moving toward the other
end of the park where the gate reads closed,
where the lights are dimmed and the
pigeons have folded their gray wings.

Copyright © 2005 Walter Griffin All rights reserved
from Poet Lore
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission