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