TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

It’s probably happened to you before: Your phone rings, and when you pick it up and say “Hi!” or “What’s up?” there’s no one there to greet you. Instead, you hear muffled talking or ambient sounds in the background — traffic, or music, or television. Ah, you realize. This person didn’t mean to call me.

It’s a strangely intimate thing, the pocket dial. When we’re on the receiving end, we find ourselves listening from a tucked away place close to someone’s body. It’s a pitfall of carrying our devices with us. Previous generations, generations who grew up without cell phones, didn’t have to contend with things like pocket dials.

When it happens to me, I scramble to hang up right away. I’m essentially eavesdropping without trying, and I’d hate to overhear something I shouldn’t. The other person doesn’t even realize I’m listening! It’s a perfect setup for an embarrassing disaster.

On the other hand, as today’s poem shows us, a pocket dial might also offer us a tender look at — and a tender listen into — life without our presence.

Pocket Dial
by James Davis May

After my three hellos go unanswered
and I hear plate clatter and cutlery chimes
while a waiter catalogues the specials
of a restaurant somewhere in Pittsburgh,
I know I’m in my father’s blazer, nestled
near his heart, where he keeps his phone,
and see him at the table with my mother,
ear angled toward the server, his Depression-
era palate unimpressed if not dismayed
by the mention of truffle aioli,
microgreens, and butternut squash risotto
but at least this time withholding his opinion
so my mother can select her champagne
in peace and then ask for more time

to decide her entree. The server gone,
they resume the conversation that preceded me—
that is, that preceded my listening,
which I resume as well, not catching much 
of what they say but knowing somehow
from their tones that they are happy tonight
in their far-off presence, so much so
it feels almost as though I’m eavesdropping 
on the afterlife I’d imagine for them
as they eat bread, surrounded by good light 
and a soundtrack of general pleasure,
the living world and its sadness reduced
all the way down to a small tremor
in a small voice that says it loves them.

“Pocket Dial” by James Davis May. Used by permission of the poet.