A transpacific call

A transpacific call, the night, your voice,
Your lips that nestled round the words you said.
A sudden stab of longing, but there's no choice
Except to hold your image close instead.
This wounded distance seems to swirl and turn
Our thoughts and faces, like disembodied signs.
And every second, a second which we burn
Away down into these strangled telephone lines.
But softly through this link of satellites
you say the words, to make distances dissolve.
For just one moment, we touch, through the nights
of time and space in which our names revolve.
I hold you nearer, this faith we understand.
The mouthpiece, earpiece cradled in my hand.

(by Suman Subba)