Езеро с лодка/Lake with boat

We might do this,

go out through the city’s

diminishing suburbs,

apartment blocks,

industrial estates,

the slip-roads,

human tarmac envelope,

and keep going until

we’re pulling over

in some lay-by

and crunching steps

along a gravel path

which narrows

and then gives out.

We might do this

and track a way

through trees,

the ardent foliage,

gnats clouding

liminal sunlight,

to the limit

of a glaucous lake

and my offering to

row out to where

we’ll be sat above

the viscid spaces

into which fish

and uncertainties glide.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Пролет/Spring

How these newcomers must see us

on this first warmish day

when daffodils hold their own

and winter hangs around

at the cusp of memory.

In the street, we’re talking

about parking arrangements,

box-shifting, the bollards

put out for a moving in,

a jazz gig in another country.

As the recently eclipsed sun

goes down, I can hear myself

reiterating the words of welcome

in a cacophony of languages.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Приятелството се случва/Friendship happens

Held up by a sandwich packet’s refusal

to fold and slip through the slot of a bin,

I couldn’t have known how

this recalcitrant plastic and cardboard

was playing its part in circumstance –

that, no more than six months later,

I would be sitting on a balcony

in Druzhba or, another year on,

receiving gifts in Boris Gardens.

There was little hint of spring

in that chilly March evening

and an all-but-empty lecture hall.

At the very edge of the moment

when the day might have

begun to close like any other,

a still, small voice interrupted

my delay. Six months later,

I would be sitting on a balcony

in Druzhba and, another year on,

receiving gifts in Boris Gardens.

13 March marks the anniversary of the meeting two years ago which led to Colourful Star.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

В кухнята/Kitchen poem

At night dreams merge.

It’s as if there’s something

I can’t avoid – the flight

upwards and outwards

over alps and plains.

In the kitchen,

we’re well met.

In the kitchen,

dreams merge.

This room

is for friends.

The guests

are on the balcony.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips