The sentient telephone pole stands beside a road that it cannot travel down.
"I am encumbered, bound to the ground and the air by soil and wires." Always, the sentient telephone pole reaches out, but no one eases into the offered embrace. Once in a while a maintenance worker climbs the iron rungs held in its body like a kind of jewelry, a harsh piercing. The worker rises, does what he will, touches, changes, and then leaves. Conversations go on all day and night in the wires, but none address the sentient telephone pole. "My sister has cancer." "Hi, let me talk to Annie. The court said you have to." "Let's go bowling." "We're getting married!" Once, the sentient telephone pole was a sentient tree with a network of roots, part of an endless conversation. The woods were peaceful, sparrows visited its branches, the sun shone on its leaves, nourishing it. It had vibrancy, but now only utility. The modern world has passed the sentient telephone pole by. Cables run underground. Satellites babble from above. Day by day, the sentient telephone pole grows drier, weaker. Its skin develops fissures and the wind whips the wires. A red-wing blackbird lands atop its flat head, fussing. Hello old friend, says the sentient telephone pole, but nothing is the same and the bird flies off across an indifferent sky.