'tis far off,

And rather like a dream than an assurance.

It's odd, love, sleeping in strange beds

twelve thousand miles apart: me Tasmania,

the Artist's Cottage in the Gorge,

where possums scratch the weatherboard,

wake me up at two a.m.; and you

your mother's Berlin flat, the stale smell

of her old habits as what's now left

of her. You phoned tonight

and it wasn't Liverpool but Somewhere Else.

And it's a Star-Trek planet I am talking from.

Yesterday a man plonked an A-to-Z

of where we live down on the table

after a meal, to make me feel at home,

of roasters, lamb, mint sauce.

I had to show the Bootle I was born in,

the Halewood we live in now. Looking down

from Outer Space, There, I said,

my wife's this moment walking the dog.