Poem

Toll Call

Robert B. Shaw

“Is it raining there?”
your voice on the phone
wondered for no reason
right at the end.
It was, where you were.
I looked out. It wasn’t.
But after I hung up
the dumb receiver
(why couldn’t we both
have stayed off the hook?)
in a minute or two
I saw a few sprinkles,
confirming the proverb,
you might say, about
the just and the unjust.
But only just.

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