Poetry ... for the heck of it

Journal entry: 12-7-02

Papaw's Telephone

There is an old phone I got from my grandfather’s barn
It doesn’t work, but it is a memory of him.
I’d like to pick it up and hear the conversations that once filtered through it,
Talk of kids, and cars, and unmentionables.

He died four years ago of Parkinson’s Disease, in Springhill.
I was there, he recognized me with wide eyes.
For years he could not talk, but only write
His voice gone, but not his mind.

After years in the nursing home, the medication, the age, the mind slipped.
And he revealed to us secrets of his life.
He was afraid of the windows, They’ll shoot me! he wrote
It was his fears of the War, his inability to move.

He always remembered me, the only Stevens male left.
With wide eyes and big hands, he’d squeeze mine
And write to me a few scribbled questions,
What kind of man had I grown to become?

And then one day, He wrote a phone number down
And scrawled, She’ll take care of me.
My grandmother called it, and found out another secret
That had been swept under the rug of time.

He died a disgrace, everyone knowing his secrets.
A man of honesty and integrity, but died with little.
I preached my first funeral, and they all said I was good;
A man of honesty and integrity.

But, I kept the phone I found in his barn, as a reminder
Of its secret, whispered conversations.
What was once hidden, became known unto all, and I will not forget
To act with honesty and integrity, in secret too.

~Toby Stevens

www.thejourneyanchorage.org

I'm currently reading:

The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything, by Brian McLaren

Chasing Daylight, by Erwin McManus