Long Distance

There was a phone box

just outside the school grounds

that smelt of pee, and although

I didn’t have a two pence piece

to call her, I could dial the

number and listen to the tone

in the receiver and imagine

the phone simultaneously

ringing in our hall at home.

And this tenuous connection

was a crumb of cold comfort,

as after a few visits I learned

that if a phone remained

unanswered for long enough

the equal tones eventually

became one long continuous

tone, like a flat-line

in a hospital death bed scene.

John H Davies

13th February 2011