To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

Two Poems for Tom Marshall
David
Helwig
for Tom
Waiting rooms. I write this
in a small hospital
in an old town; elsewhere, you
are held in cold storage, deep
in your fabulous stone city.
2
Fire in April, a secret image,
caressed, and now, suddenly, yours,
the frozen body taken
by the first element.
3
On a barren highway, surrounded
by the endlessness of everything
I think of you, Tom, your bright
blue eyes, your sudden accuracies,
the babble of bachelor loneliness.
All across China, we shared
rooms and with a cool
mandarin respect
for the other's privacy.
After thirty years
the story of your life
becomes the story of mine.
(Or is it other way around?)
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