Полет/Flight

Days when the sky

was all scudding cloud

and space –

the rate of climb

of those pioneers

like Mum’s dad,

flying flimsy string

and canvas contraptions –

were there again

when you stretched

full length on the hill,

lay back and thought

of eglantine –

was that the name?

– and thick masks

of colour back home,

the profligate spill

of climbing plants,

reaching for the sky

and above you

the space

of scudding clouds.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Нов семестър/A new term

Somewhere up behind the pub

beside the roundabout, the road

dithers between cycle paths

and rattling cattle grids.

In the pre-dawn’s early light,

I’m hashing together lecture notes

and thoughts I might need to have

under transitional cloud cover

until here, with stumped old trees,

I should be at a loss. Not so –

I’m on this particular corner

of the road and over there,

like some well-placed opposite,

this reminder, pollarded from last year.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Между народите/Between nations

Endlessly, the trees behave.

Each branch and twig

might draw the line between

crisp breath and the mist.

Guards stand and stamp

at this point where worlds

collapse into a border.

Beneath ghosting

frontier architecture,

passports are handed over.

We each have our case,

a claim to an identity,

which someone somewhere

in ministry or embassy

will accept, will condone.

Outside the windows

of this sweaty minibus,

a forest occurs, declining

into atmospheric effects,

a foggy weekday morning –

and us, we can’t see the wood

for the proverbial trees.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Входът/Gateway

 Between whatever else happens,

we might be straying across

what’s marked out – the given

delineation of boundaries.

Up in the woods there,

where trackways are signed

and somehow we’re brought out

to a picnic area’s designated space,

we’re talking too of dens

and interlaced branches,

traces of those who’ve been

and gone before – and, of course,

those other distant woods.

Through the trees,

some light effect suggests

a geography of displacement.

Mushrooms grow out

of punk timber like antennae

and we’re coming down

through leaf matter, jutting stones

to the river where, without

so much as a thought,

the path becomes

a path that’s leading home.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Лисица/Fox

The garish light blaze

is the garage across the road

about to close. Working late,

I’m half-lost in old thoughts,

memory's oddments and that –

that brief whisk of a tail

against my legs and I'm up to the door

and going in through the hall

to a back bedroom from where

I can see fox cubs playing possum

in an abandoned bath.

They do their best to look

photogenic, sport
dunned orange, 

hiding and seeking.
And we’d be in

our kitchen watching.

It’s not snowed,

it's not a thought.

but, there,

across the grass

comes the parent-fox.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips