(for Helen)
There was nothing strange
about that overnight stop
in Singleton, New South Wales,
a wagon-train ride from Sydney,
where you and Warren welcomed
two pilgrims from the far country,
except it was a one-horse town
no-one had heard of, and except,
after a night of drenching rain,
the street was parched as Laramie,
and except on the hotel’s frame balcony,
where gunfighters should have slouched,
waiting for a man to step off a train,
backpackers drowsed in the faint sun
of a new morning, and except, of course,
we were a long, long way from home
and, somewhere in that stolen moment,
all too aware that you were even longer.
