by BRIAN CRONWALL
So, I called your cellphone,
left a message on your land-line,
texted, emailed, faxed,
sent a letter first class,
left a note on your car,
carved words on a park bench and a bamboo stalk,
had the message printed in Braille,
performed it in American Sign Language on YouTube,
tweeted a poem for you (#pleasepleaseplease),
tried to cut a 30-second PSA to air on local cable access,
approached ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC, CBC, CNN, MSNBC,
Fox, Al-Jazeera, Russian Today, The Food Channel, and every religious nextwork,
posted and scrolled through too many “Missed Connections” on Craigslist,
hired a small airplane to write across the sky,
talked to everyone in the checkout lines at Costco and WalMart,
remembered you and re-re-re-read all your old messages to me,
until, months later,
after I was declared competent to stand trial,
after the judge heard all the testimony and pronounced me guilty,
I now lie on my bunk in Cell 17 of Block B
and wonder if I really love you, if I ever did,
until lights out,
when I close my eyes
and hope to dream
I am ascending, gloriously above,
floating through clouds,
and never, never looking back.
—
Brian Cronwall is a retired English professor living on Kaua`i in Hawai`i. His work has been published in journals and anthologies in Hawai`i, Guam, the Continental United States, Australia, Japan, France, and the United Kingdom.