Wichita (a song for Edward Leedskalnin)

My father still hears you sing
He still needs that vacation
He still needs you more than wants you
I know that he does
I have sensed something of you in the tension of his shoulders
In the smell of the day’s sweat
When the world sleeps
And he is alone at last in his kitchen
A bulb for his company
And a drink for his meal

I have wondered
As he drives under that baking sun,
Tracing the cables with his eyes
Dark lines darting between the rays of the light

And in this city night of perpetual gloam
In the crash of storms brewing
Moisture kissing the skin of his arms
Working beneath his heavy gloves
Born upon cool air lashing out into the night
Like waves from an unseen sea
In which he is forever lost
…I have wondered

Did you ever exist?

At three-thirty-two a.m.
He says he heard you singing
A girl and a boy and a mother of three
Were pulled from a fire
By axe and frenzy
By men in heavy coats
He says they heard you too.
That he was there to keep the line clear.

I have never seen a photograph
I have never heard your name
Yet I think I know you
From the hollow, haunted emptiness in his eyes.
You live out there somewhere
Somewhere that can’t be touched by fingertip.

I have told him stories,
News of the world
Tales of satellites and radio towers
Tales of cold science fiction
And phones that talk to the sky
He dismisses me and my world of the now

I know
He will never come back.
He hears only you
In the soft whispered words
Of one tin can tied to the next.