Howard Firkin
You’re never more than Google million miles
away and so you ought to feel all right,
she says, or would say were she here tonight.
She’s not. She’s under someone else’s smile;
her belly’s under someone else’s hands.
I should be earning points or air miles, surely.
I’m paying, getting nothing in return
for all the aviation fuel I burn:
her loyalty programme rewards me poorly—
an outcome every traveller understands.

If distance lends estrangement to us two,
we’re many thousand lifetimes’ space apart.
And yet you’re imminent. I’m close to you
with each click of my taxi meter heart.