A hopeful poem for Spring 2020 and the last day of Poetry Month

~
He drives up in a Pac Bell truck,
ready to fix my phone
though 611 said my instrument
was at fault, my twenty dollar phone.
He bellies up to the outside wall,
hugging the paint to avoid
the spines of an ancient cactus
and the kitchen window, swung open
to air out the Saturday morning smell
of fried potato and onions.
Finding no problem in the gray box
that splits the wires coming into the house,
he climbs a ladder he leans
against the brick wall that separates us
from looming apartment buildings
and swings up the spiked pole
into Ponderosa pine branches
where a limb weighs down the black wire
bringing electric pulses to me. . . .

—From “Pacific Bell Comes Calling,” a poem by Trina Gaynon. Read the full poem in the Spring 2020 issue of the Apple Valley Review (Volume 15, Number 1).

Find this and other poems from the Apple Valley Review: https://www.applevalleyreview.com