You hate the telephone
but will not see me
face to face
so I am left
beseeching you
long-distance,
trying to thread our love
along the telephone poles
of Vermont,
trying to tunnel it
under the Atlantic
as if it were
a rare fossil
I'd unearthed,
or an offshore pipe
bearing precious oil.

But it is your face
I love,
your funny grin
that now seems
cruel around the edges.
You do not wish to be
cruel--you,
the kindest person in the world,
but driven to curious
rages
when you feel
pressured, frustrated,
saddled with
an albatross of love
like an ancient
mariner
who tells his same sad story
to the wedding guests.

The telephone will not
suffice.
Coleridge would have
loathed it,
& so would his
mariner.
It is our modern
Person from Porlock,
interrupting poems,
interrupting loves
& forever
keeping us at arm's length.

I would look you in the eye
again, saying yes, yes, yes--
we have said no enough,
for the rest
of many lifetimes.

© Erica Mann Jong

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