Stuart Gunter – The Wind Telephone

Last week marked the ten-year anniversary of the tsunami that killed over 19,000 people in northeastern Japan. Stuart Gunter’s poem, The Wind Telephone, engages with one of the more poignant symbols of the disaster in the country: ‘I first heard the story of the wind telephone on This American Life. I could not imagine the terror and resulting pain of that experience, and thought the idea of being able to call the spirits by phone was worth exploring.’

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The Wind Telephone 

When 19,000 people swept out 
to sea, a young man bought 
an old phone booth and placed
it in his Japanese garden. How 

do we stay connected to 
the dead? How do we grieve? 
We play piano and pray into 
the night. We hear them in 

the silence as a tear traces 
a cheek and the crickets 
and frogs send up their 
racket to the moon. We might 

say little, or nothing. Farmers
and fishermen calling wives, 
mothers, daughters, sons, fathers,
the children and parents, all gone. 

The dial tone is silent and the ringing 
reaches up to the clouds: Hello, if 
you’re out there, please listen to me.
Please, be okay. Please: be okay.
Without all of you, it’s meaningless.

Have a good trip. Good luck.
As if they could hear them
and would be home in time 
for supper.

This poem first appeared in the January 2018 Share This Poem section of Broad Street.