All these years and I still don't understand
how it works, how the signal gets through
the bones of my hand, the bricks of this house,
the bank building opposite, and across miles
of suburb and field, pylons and roads,
hills and four rivers to precisely you,
in another city, another house, another room,
hunched by the bath with your phone in your hand,
sobbing. You can't bear to feel so split,
you gasp. Downstairs you hear
a chair scrape, a man's voice.
He laughs, in dialogue with another ghost.
But I understand how light works.
Earlier your back gleamed like a guitar.
The last leaves on the sycamore
flickered like a school of mackerel.
Later I will go out in a leopard coat of light
without you: just me and the trees baring themselves
for winter, and the marbled paving stones,and my empty hand shining
By Henry Shukman