Matthew Thorburn

O first chain of digits I ever memorized,
number I punched in button by button
or, when very young, dragged
awkwardly around the rotary dial
with my finger to call home.
O number that followed my parents

and me, then just them, from house
to house for nearly fifty years—
Picketts Way, Westport Drive,
Willow Woods Lane, and finally
Vienna Way—until before long
the phone rang less

and less, then not at all, or only
with recorded messages, reminders
of doctor’s appointments, wrong
numbers, someone selling insurance.
They took the boxy black phone
off the wall, pulled the jack, the hole

plastered, painted over and forgotten.
A framed seascape hangs there now.
O number my parents filled in on
permission slips for school field trips
to say where they could be
reached in case of an emergency

that never came. O number
I keep on my cell phone, on speed dial,
even now because it still calls up
this love for what was, a partial cure
for the loneliness that stretches
like telephone wires from New Jersey

back to Michigan. O number I’d dial
to hear Dad say, “Hang on a sec,
I’ll tell Mom you’re on the phone,”
hear her “Hell-oh?” and the story
of whatever they were doing—
clearing the table, watching CNN

or Wheel of Fortune. O number I know
I’ll always know by heart—
number I’ll remember when everything
else is lost. “Why,” people will wonder,
“does that old guy move his finger
in a circle as he mumbles, ‘Three, two…?’”