Alison Clayton-Smith
The Call
Dad messages me the following day to apologise for talking too much on our weekly call. He got into one of those diatribes against religion. Says he’ll set the phone timer to 15 minutes in future. So I tell him it’s okay, I know you don’t have anyone to talk to most of the time. But do forgive me if my concentration waivers when it’s something I’m not really interested in. You’re 80, I don’t say, I know there may not be many more years of calls. I’d rather not listen to the same rants over and over, but I do it because it matters to you.
you apologized for going into preacher mode what you really wanted was to say something I never heard
About the Author
Alison Clayton-Smith discovered a love for tanka during a recent course with Alan Summers. This is the first tanka prose she has written, so is delighted to have it accepted, and looks forward to seeing where tanka leads her.
Okay, I’m mentioned, so I can say how proud I am of this poet who has only fairly recently investigated both haiku and tanka. Their grasp of tanka was really quick, it’s not that easy for everyone, including myself in the early days!
That last three lines:
what you really wanted
was to say
something I never heard
It’s just brilliant, I’d not heard of that way of saying something, though I’m sure my mom’s incessant calls, at all times and places, to my cellphone, might have been both a contact call, wishing I’d come back (although I visited her highly regularly), and maybe, just maybe, wanting or wishing to say something I didn’t know, though it never happened.
So much to have learnt, so many questions either never asked or never answered.
All we had in the end was laughter, as that’s a good thing to remember at the end of the day!
Wonderful tanka prose piece. Titles are funny things, especially with haibun and tanka prose pieces.
Because of that definite article in the title, it could mean every call, and the very last one to happen. Which is why “The Call” feels right, as it’s all about ‘the call’ each and every one of them, until there are no more.
warm regards,
Alan
Thank you, Alan! I’m so glad I did that course. I’ve found a beautiful way to express the things that rumble inside my head.
What a memorable and potent piece the last lines are awesome.
Thank you, Tim!
Deep congratulations!! Really great tanka!! I so remember those weekly calls with my father ( and later, nightly calls with my mother) – both now gone. Your work really captures the essence of those calls! Brava!!
Thank you so much, Colette!