Dropped

I stumbled across a dropped call today.

I picked it up and wondered what dangling conversation

hung on its edges.

Upon scanning the area along the side of Almena road

I saw hundreds of fallen voices laying there.

I had stepped all over them like so many worms

on a rain soaked day.

The flattened words lay dead,

some hoping for a resurrection,

and some wishing they had never been said.

Idled words.

Loving words with their passion subtracted.

Crouching down, I started picking them up

like loose change on car mats.

I began to pile them in my left palm.

They became a pyramid of nouns,

verbs, and adjectives grouted 

together by prepositions.

Oh for a refrigerator to throw

these on so I can order them like a shell game.

Maybe there a chance I can put the sentences back together.

Maybe there’s hope to text the best words

with the purist of intentions to the expecting phones.

Maybe I can stand in the gap where the cell towers

wandered too far away from each other.

I do hate to see words lying beside the road.