[Poem#19] Hello, Said with Delight

When the phone rang, that familiar beloved
sound, his waiting voice bouncing off
satellites and across the scraping towerous
peaks and the endless burgeoning fields,

he was there somehow, in the well of my
mind, brown always-short hair with a slight
wave in the wind, driving from Fargo to Bismarck,
window down despite
the May chills the prairie is known for,

the highways that are marked 75, but
most go faster, and the cell phone by his ear,
while the car barrels past field after field of
corn, then beans, then corn, then beans,
stretching out toward kingdom come.

Nine months since we've talked, a wedding,
a graduation, much life since then as the band
on his left hand keeps control of the wheel
and the early morning awaiting keeps my
reality in check, and yet after twenty odd

years of friendship, born out of mothers sharing
hormonal craving stories, bellies bulging against
the kitchen table, it is all fine - the time, the wife,
the completely opposite lives on the side and middle
of the country.

Our history within that world of waving stalks and
dusty dirt roads makes me confident as I see him
drive and I see me pick up the phone, ready for
catching up.