Young Bulgarian Woman

Head-scarved and pensive, it might just be

That she’s on her way to a neighbour’s house.

There’s been word in the village, perhaps,

And these first few cautious days have passed.

“New-born, he’s already lifting suns.

In our hearts, we’ll see love planted.

Knowing now that, after times

Of beginning, growing, waiting,

Life’s tenacity endures,

All we can say is ‘welcome’.”

With that, perhaps, she’ll move on

To promises affirmed across the generations.

Sunday 30 March is Mother's Day in Britain (Bulgaria's was on International Women's Day: see the post for 8 March below).

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Annunciation

Five storeys up, in that nondescript room

overlooking hospital car park,

tangled thorns on waste ground patches,

you flinched when the sensor

touched and slid across your belly.

On the screen, grey flecks swirled,

coalesced like a mathematical equation

solving itself, a satellite image

of stratospheric cloud formations.

Although later you admitted

stirrings of renascent faith, for now

the lubricant dried in curls on your skin.

‘It’s not exactly the Annunciation,’ you said.

Then the printer whirred, and there it was,

in black and white: indistinct shapes

of bulging head, ribcage, limbs;

the good news of our first unborn.

As you wiped yourself clean,

stepped out of the shapeless gown,

the nurse, resetting equipment

for her next mother, could not resist:

‘My father’s name was Gabriel, you know.’

25 March is the Feast of the Annunciation or, in Bulgarian, Благовещение. In the UK it is also known as Lady Day, the first of the year's quarter days, and was, in fact, New Year's Day until the middle of the 18th century. 

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

The Old Crate

Where did he get them from, my dad,

those old wooden crates which he filled

with tools, gloves, engine parts,

light bulbs, tulip bulbs, bulbs of garlic?

They’d be stacked in garage and greenhouse,

propping each other on corner pegs,

contents hidden, for the most part,

by stained and splintering sides –

or occasionally they’d appear in the kitchen,

when it was time to make ready for planting

or he’d picked too many Bramleys from the tree.

It was how he carried things around,

filling a crate with what he’d need for a day

at the allotment, fishing on the canal bank,

or taking chrysanthemums, carrots, onions

to the village horticultural show.

Sometimes one would give way,

or be given away, and somehow

he’d replace it with one just as battered,

bartered for at a market stall

or agricultural suppliers –

and we’d go on living amongst them,

his clutter-box leaning towers,

his cabinets of curiosities.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Old Man from the Village

That age is not a lessening –

time is not a whittling down

until we’re next to nothing –

that somewhere still

there is the boy who played

on the balcony, found

adventure in the forest;

the young buck who sat

late into the night, sang

for love and supper;

the father, the farmer,

the one who endured.

That age is not a lessening

in the face, the eyes

of an old man from the village.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Women's Day & Mother's Day

They sounded like fairytales,

stories that Mum told

of lost fortunes, drunk men

and moonlight flits –

resourcefulness demanded

in those interwar years.

Before then too:

great-grandmother Rose,

jobbing actress, sneaking

babies in baskets

into dressing rooms –

or her mother, Ann,

standing on the dock

in Liverpool, newly arrived

from famine-wasted Ireland

not knowing how

they’d ever make ends meet.

And on the stairs now, pictures –

mother, grandmother, daughter –

here and in the ascendant.

8 March is both International Women's Day and Mother's Day in Bulgaria.

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

In the countryside

These houses lying close –

to landscape, history,

prudent traditions –

easy to think them

exotic vernacular,

scenery for thoughts

we bring with us –

or hoped to leave behind.

The colours of place –

balconies, chimneys, stone, wood,

precipitate slopes and foliage –

they can’t help but recall

a certain day, with just a hint,

up there in the mountains,

of autumn in stunned air.

Nowhere someone

calls home is remote.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips