Photo by Ana_Cotta, used under Creative Commons License
I wrote a number of poems for this challenge, but one idea kept popping into my head and I couldn't get over it (or past it). It was this ...
Following on this theme of phone booths in literature and film, my brainstorming took me to phone booth stuffing, the T.A.R.D.I.S., The Phantom Toll Booth, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and more. After a bit of noodling, this is what I finally settled on.
NostalgiaI weep for
Clark Kent
Dr. Who
Harry Potter
Where will Clark become Superman?
How with the Doctor travel through time and space?
How will Harry visit the Ministry of Magic?
It’s been years since I’ve seen
an honest-to-God booth
with a door and working phone
the kind you secretly popped into
to check for forgotten change
or ducked into to get
out of the rain
I miss the snap and ch-ch-ch-ch-ch
of the old rotary dial
and later, the beep-beep-beep
of metal push buttons
I long to enter a
royal red box in London
dial 62442 (magic!)
and descend through the ground
I dream of taking a trip
in the T.A.R.D.I.S.
to talk poetry with
Dickinson and Frost
I pray that if I ever need assistance
my heroes will find a space to
hang their hats and transform
Today I’m missing telephone booths.
What will I miss tomorrow?
Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2017. All rights reserved.
You can read the poems written by my poetry sisters at the links below.
I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe. Happy poetry Friday friends!
Clark Kent can still move to Japan! They still have full phone booths, which shocked me when I travelled there - I think you'd be hard-pressed to even find a pay phone anywhere in my city anymore. :( The times, they are a-changing!
ReplyDeleteTricia, I really love that last couplet especially! The thought of what we're going to miss in the future is such a universal thing, as our lives are defined by loss. I'll be writing ekphrastic poems again this April -- they year, art portraits! Happy Poetry Friday!
ReplyDeleteHa ha ha -- I LOVE this!! Brilliant!! "I long to enter a royal red box in London"... Yes!
ReplyDeleteScotland still has you covered - Glasgow's shopping areas, as a matter of fact, have the old blue boxes for police ....still for police! They're actually IN there, and the boxes glow blue from the laptop screens. And there are phone boxes all over. It's fun
ReplyDeleteYes, what WILL we miss tomorrow? (Actually, a thought too scary upon which to dwell for too long...)
ReplyDeleteWe share some phone booth experiences:
ReplyDeletethe kind you secretly popped into
to check for forgotten change
or ducked into to get
out of the rain,
and now I find myself remembering the phone booth in the house where I lived at college, with all its graffiti, the seat grungy with unwashed jeans, the air heavy with homesickness.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how fast so many things changed, physical and otherwise, when we all got phones. I don't think anyone understands the magnitude of this shift, and it scares me.
Love your take on this photo, Tricia!
Oh, Tricia--my favorite of the day! Love the humor in this, and all the pop culture references, and the sighing but not bitter tone--the acknowledgment of change. A wonderful read!
ReplyDelete