A Friend Calls

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.

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

those days of life

must have been.

Yet even there,
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

Sheltering

Sheltering

My boots crunch dark gravel.
Wind whips the skin of standing water.
Sheltering, behind a dry wall -
grey, flecked stone -
a snowdrop.

Stem bending in the wind,
fragile petals tossed,
sitting out the storm.

A quick brooding cloud
brings rain then hail -
small, stinging barbs of ice.
I join the snowdrop
and we hide together.

The cloud slides by,
sun lights the immaculate
white head as it nods
in the nagging breeze.


Tim Fellows 2019

Image by Capri23auto from Pixabay

That's Politics And This Is Us

In October 2017 the BBC aired a documentary series where Simon Reeve travelled through Russia. One of the interviews that stuck with me was a woman called Tatiana who lived in a rural village north of Moscow that was slowly dying. This is not unusual, of course, having happened here as cities become wealthier and more attractive to young people. When questioned about the increasing tension with the west and whether we should be fighting, she made the comment "There's politics and there's us". How true that is.

That's Politics And This Is Us

In the heartlands of Russia
where state farms once held sway
cottages collapse
when the kids move away.
They leave behind old folk
and the villages die -
the only things left
are mosquitos and flies.

In Rio's favelas,
in South Central LA
where the roaches come calling
as night follows day.
In the war zones of Syria
where the dead children sigh
there's always a welcome
when hope goes to die. 

In the capital cities
where oligarchs rule
they always remember
who they have to fool.
When they feel threatened
by the forces within
they find a new enemy
and it all starts again. 

The elected dictator
of Moscow's new dawn
still curses the day
that Glasnost was born.
He ramps up the rhetoric
for a second Cold War,
the chess pieces move
and the walls rise once more.

We're told by our leaders
who we have to hate -
they press the buttons
that determine our fate.
Americans and Russians
in helmets and boots
have all the same problems
caused by leaders in suits.

In the sad Russian village
the woman just sighs
when asked of her feelings
and the arguments why
Westerners are enemies
and then become friends
then enemies once more -
a song without end

"It is as it will be
and it was ever thus
I just say - that's Politics,
and this is us.”

 Tim Fellows 2019

Image by Дмитрий Осипенко from Pixabay

Outback

Outback

Day was born again to clear, dark skies;
red-orange, cold winter falls on holy ground
that tourists climb to soil and desecrate
while sullen, ancient, drink-wrecked locals
haunt the streets of Alice.

Northwards, under a billion unfamiliar stars,
towards the warmth on miles of black tar track.
We paused at dusk as trucks ploughed on,
pouched animals gaping, splattered
by road-trains that roll like behemoths
through lonely towns.

Under canvas in the outback,
wary of each and every
scratching, shrieking night-noise.

This is no land for soft-skinned Poms,
this burnt land, desiccated, exhausted.
As the sun rises and falls all grows less dry,
reds turn to yellows. Green winter shoots
caught our eye as we trod the place
where the Devil played marbles as a boy.

This scorched land, parched and screaming
for the rain that flows like Heaven's cleansing.
When rivers fill and reptilian danger
lurks silently in creek and bush.
At last we reach the wave-smashed rocky shore,
the swirling sea in which no man can swim alive.

Tim Fellows 2019

Image by pen_ash from Pixabay

Whale

Whale

You are the symbol of our time,
belly filled with all our waste.
I observe you, mouth agape,
filtering your food
in the blue-black deep.
Your loneliness is fed
and grows with time,
a dark and brooding cancer
in our seas.
Your bulk glides through
the salt and weed
past fish that flicker
fast and free.
Your eye, a tiny pinprick on your
glorious head
sees only what it needs to see
and I see you, emerging proud
above the foaming waves,
with a twist come crashing down
with farewell flick of giant tail. 


Tim Fellows 2019

Image by skeeze from Pixabay

Prospect Villa

Prospect Villa

The house has rarely been as cold as this
since we were here together long ago
the coal fire standing quiet and unlit
as dormant as the rose of Jericho

Mist from dad's paintings leaks into the air
the signs of you recorded everywhere
the scratches on the table, four plain chairs
became the altar of your daily prayers

A love shared out through all the happy years
hides in these walls, I feel it through my skin;
it seeps into my bones and swells the tears
so loaded with the grief I hold within.

But like the rose this place will flower anew
and love will flow and build another home
and other children will remember too
this house where I, in silence, stand alone.

Tim Fellows 2019

Upon Hull

I spent time in Hull when I was a student in 1983, working for what had been the White Fish Authority and had recently become "Seafish". I have been back a few times, but never for very long, often as a rugby referee or with the children for tennis events. I recently went back and had a bit of a drive round, then ran alongside the Humber to where I briefly worked.




Upon Hull

War, raging on the sea,
far from the city,
had shaken its foundations.

I walked the avenues
and breathed the cold air
where gulls cried.

Made phone calls in piss-soaked
white boxes
on the edge of nowhere.

Docks still alive with men,
fish processed on the quays
reeked with an ungodly
and malevolent odour.
Their dead eyes wept.

The diesel-stained train
pulled away from the city
that the poet so waspishly
put down.
The train departed but he stayed.

Across broken bridges the city splits,
each side lapping
from the slick waters.

I drive the twin lanes they built
to speed the traffic through.
No need to stay and look.

But I stay - I spend time, observe
the decaying, graffiti-stained
buildings I once worked.
Shattered glass sparkles.
Scudding clouds
head over bleak flatlands
to the killing grounds.

It parades its pawn shops,
vaping emporia and boarded-up
forgotten nightclubs.
Relentlessly and unapologetically
working class.

Here, where the fish once stank,
a retail heaven of glass and gaud.
The poet may have asked
"Which stinks more?"

Pockets of industrial resistance
break through dereliction
and try to stem the tide.

Grey-blue ebbing river,
choppy under knifing gusts -
the life-blood. Towers
stand in splendid defiance
as sparse traffic crosses its span.

A quick, blood soaked blade
once gutted this city -
flesh decaying,
rancid, spoiled.

I leave it behind once more,
receding in my mirror,
as the day warms
the fractured memories.

Tim Fellows 2019

Image by Andrew Sidebottom from Pixabay