Колелото в парка/The bicycle in the park

Misjudging connections, I’d arrived

too soon in that only just known town

and in the last remaining phone booth

the rattling, rejected coins were proof

that I’d not been able to raise you for money,

let alone love.

                        

Yet not so far away,

paths some noble obliged to have cut

opened onto vistas of a municipal park

and a bicycle unchained by a lamp-post

spoke of an irredeemable trust.

Perhaps some couple not unlike us

rode tandem here, or a lunchtime escapee,

brained by air-conditioning,

pedalled out to find the real thing -

who knows? Or perhaps it was yours.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Чайник и зеленчуци/Kettle and vegetables

I learnt the word патладжан early on.

Not long after, amongst refurbished stalls

beyond the central market, aubergine

wasn’t on the list, but I took back

raspberries the colour of arterial blood

and improvised a breakfast overlooking

cafe tables, fronds of urban scrub.

I would be there now. By crevices

of stone walls and tram incursions,

we’d be sipping black coffee

and waiting on friends. But here,

in our kitchen, I’m making tea

and патладжанът on the side

is once again an aubergine.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Езерото/The Lake

We sat in that garden, just below

mountainous scenery. It was

recognising some words

in his language which got us

talking. It tasted

like the back-end of my life,

like something I’d never expected.

The great gulls swung in

across the distant water.

I’m partial, I’ll admit it.

At the end of the pontoon,

slim bodies dive into the lake.

We walk through town later

and sit in this familiar bar.

The football results are on

and I’m sneaking up an alley

to get a good signal. In no more

than a few days, I’ll be home.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Рози/Roses

Just above flaked paint and crusted brick

outside the kitchen door, a trio of roses

depends on nothing so much as a string

round which their tendrils twist and grip.

An inclement early summer has turned

our garden feral bucolic – its lack

of austerity’s fecund with motley,

aerial mating damson flies, excitable

finches squabbling. Dripping ferns

splay upwards like invitations.

A helicopter saws the breeze.

From the sun glints on its skis,

it’s apparently protecting us,

sending wildness off to scamper,

and for a moment at least

I can’t remember anything like this

assertion of some right to interference.

My father grew roses, their pink shades

used to hang in our living room.

All he was ever concerned with

was their smell and preventing the blight

which he knew might destroy them.

I can’t speak for him, but I suspect

he would have delighted in seeing

roses painted one day in Bulgaria.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips