Understanding Fiction

A two-year-old calls out “Ring, Ring!” and hands us

a play phone, and we take it and say “Hello.”

We carry on a full conversation

if need be, and chances are we need to,

smiles and all. 

                         Does it matter if the child

doesn’t follow all that we say? We could

speak of Charlie Parker and Dave Brubeck

or pray for our long-dead Uncle Hutchins,

so long as the illusion is strong.

Chances are the child plays another game

while you talk, stacking bright rings on a peg,

perhaps, or painting her nails with a toothbrush

and the dog’s water bowl.  

                                            When she grows up,

she’ll not remember much more than the phone.

Uncle Hutchins remains just a name

on a list in the family Bible,

and the giants of jazz are just as dead

as he to this child who recalls nothing

but the faded pink phone we held, our voice,

our presence. 

           It’s a time of worthy deceit,

don’t you think? And this poem a parable

that says fiction can carry a good truth,

and  that we who write know the lessons

of irony better than most; we can conjoin

the two ends of this lie about a phone

into something strong enough to outlast

this moment and carry her on somewhere

we don’t now know, but which, if we are lucky,

we’ll live to write about some day.

            © David Black, 2017

Corbin Fleming, brother of 2011 March of Dimes National Ambassador
Lauren Fleming, plays with United States President Barack Obama's telephone
during his family's visit to the Oval Office on 7 February 2012.
Photo by Pete Souza, posted to White House Flickr Account.
From Wikimedia Commons