Miles Away

I want you and you are not here.
I pause in this garden, and breathing the color
thought is before language into still air.
Even your name is a pale ghost and,
though I exhale it again and again,

it will not stay with me.
Tonight I make you up, imagine you, your movements
clearer that words I have you say you said before.

Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me with a look,
standing here whilst cool late light dissolves into the earth.
I have got your mouth wrong, but still it smiles.
I hold you closer, miles away, inventing love,
until the calls of nightjars interrupt and turn what was to come,
was certain, into memory.
The stars are filming us for no one.

-by Carol Ann Duffy

(This piece is a dedication to my beloved...who is miles away...)