A Friend Calls
For Matthew
I
Where was I, when you called?
It's hard to forget that sunny
windswept Birmingham field.
The news, you informed me,
was not good.
My brain reminded me, as you spoke,
that you too had played rugby
and rowed to a good standard
for your college.
I'd forgotten which one,
because you were saying
two years
perhaps, or ten with a following wind.
As I walked the mud thickened
on my feet as the rogue cells
were thickening your blood.
It's hard to forget where you were,
on those days.
II
As days became weeks, then months,
you described the treatments
in forensic detail. I imagine
the doctor did not get away
with any waffle.
The worst case date passed by,
as each year lived
allowed new medication,
new research.
Chemicals distributing
cleansing death
through your body,
but at such a price.
Marrow extracted
from anonymous, caring bones
flew the Atlantic.
from anonymous, caring bones
flew the Atlantic.
III
One day, in our irregular
update call, you asked me
what I thought about dying.
I had no answer - nothing
but awkward platitudes.
IV
It wasn't two years,
but neither was it ten.
It was seven, or more precisely,
as you would have insisted,
seven and a half.
Six months is a long time.
We carelessly let a day
go past,a week, a month.
But as I sat in the cold
cathedral, where you found
some comfort,
I knew how precious
some comfort,
I knew how precious
those days of life
must have been.
Yet even there,
in God's grandest house,
in God's grandest house,
voices of tourists echoing
in the vast and perfect space,
still no answer came.
Tim Fellows 2019
Image by Michael Beckwith from Pixabay
Tim Fellows 2019
