Grandmother with Apples

Orchards were an Eden

just beyond the end of our lane –

a temptation for boys with scuffed knees

and memories of last year’s crop

as a daredevil scurry over railings

and a clandestine feast.

Come autumn, pickers turned a blind eye

to our impertinent raids:

what were a few scrumped apples to them?

Fruit trees are generous. Had we known it,

apples are gifts to be offered over fences.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Independence Day

A grounded constellation in the distance

I’d like to think is your city –

but threaded onto radio beams

we’re coming in to land

in another country.

Not that anything’s far in time and space.

Crossing another decided border,

I’m handing over my passport with one hand,

texting news of arrival with another –

 then watching plimsolled shoes

measuring out paces along the yellow pavements.

In this swirl of whistles and vuvuzelas,

plash of fountains and shrieks from the tramlines,

I’m making for what I know,

I’m making for somewhere

which feels like home,

which doesn’t feel like a missed target.

20 September is independence day in Bulgaria - the anniversary of the 'de jure' declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire in Veliko Turnovo in 1908.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Wildflowers

Beyond the orchard and plain church,

escaping some fury of my own invention,

I’d be crossing the road to the railway station

to the edge of a wide, familiar view:

uncut wheatfield extending to stands

of remnant Victorian planting –

oaks and cedars which at one time lined

the driveway of those misnamed Towers.

How to decipher mechanised pastoral

under Luton Airport flight paths

might well have proved distraction –

in another emptying village, pale blues

and yellows in an overgrown courtyard

are plants which, had I given attention

to what was growing among the cornstalks

I might have been able to name.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

For 6 September

As the sudden dusk mellows stone distances,

crowds shuffle down, find spaces to regroup

below the citadel on this poised thoroughfare.

We’ve been walking all afternoon

through suburbs and past the blue house

where that war artist lived – in the heat

our son complains, is demanding a drink.

The crowds are a memory from this time last year,

how they gathered into this space,

and if I listen, I’m sure to hear them again –

those exultant whispers, that ripple

at the furthest edge of history that we’ve reached. 

6 September is a national holiday in Bulgaria and marks the anniversary of the unification of the northern and southern parts of the country in 1885.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Shells

A flotsam of pebbles and shells

she’s gathered on our window sill –

they’re from strands and shores

we’ll have found time

to idle on, browse

for mementoes of summer.

Forgetful of each occasion,

they won’t take us back

to where, looking down,

she found mother-of-pearl,

 or striated curiosities

of granite, flint and jet –

yet on some cold morning

we might be close enough

to interrupt ourselves

with rough textures,

banded colours

accumulated over years.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Grapes

Suggesting a different season,

breeze through a classroom window

seems to take us back to his question:

‘When you’re happy, why bother to write?’

Does the bookshelf’s scarred parade bear him out?

Can happiness survive murderous dissection?

Only just too late, as students file away

over cypress-shadowed lawn,

I remember that day a few months before –

how, having climbed between stone houses

to the monument, we sat looking out

across rooftops, gardens, from the shade.

And yes, perhaps, there’s nothing need be said,

but here I am again, returning to coffee

in paper cups, scribbling down details,

happy all right to be trying to retrieve

the sweetness of those late-summer grapes.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Pine Tree

It was a place for kite-fliers and tobogganists,

the bare dome of a wind-flustered knoll,

but that chalk figurehead fronted a ridge

whose flanks and gullies were thick with trees.

That was more my scene – where branches raised

hopes of adventure in an elevated world,

where birdsong might be taken for promises,

and, running between the tall pines,

I’d be sure to come home reeking of their scent.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips