Tom Phillips

Tom Phillips (1964) is a British poet, playwright, writer, freelance journalist and the editor of the Balkan Poetry Today. His plays have been produced in Bristol and Bath, and range from community musical Concorde Stories for BBC Radio Bristol to one-man show I went to Albania at Bristol Old Vic. He has published four poetry books. He lives and works in Bulgaria. 

 

European Union

At first it might have been coincidence

that we heard so many car horns

shifting through the Doppler effect,

or checked in at hotels where girls

in Sunday best held  hands and sang

interminable folk tunes.

Only, the following day, new coulpes

emerged from scaffolded church

with candles lit, and family groups

assembled in a park for photographs

where filigree blossom coincidentally

obscured the Stalinist backdrop.

Thirty, forty weddings eased

from municipal ceremonies to pose

beneath late-flowering cherry trees,

anticipated pleasures, and advice

they'd hardly need, being of an age

when all has seemed so changed.

Such innocence again around the square,

these brand new starts, this expectation ,

Romanian sunlight on dove-grey dresses.

Egdon Road

Some nights, quite late, the lighted corner shop

sells chocolate bars, toilet rolls and milk.

The long lane stretches to a cafe-bar or flats,

depending on which way you look down it.

Drivers on a crash course lunge at junctions;

houses back away between the streetlamps.

A lone bat barrel-rolls along front gardens,

a pipistrelle, perhaps, that tracks you home. 

Disrupted Sleep

Out of a dream of a day by an ornamental lake

where, amongst rhododendra , my father

appears to be offering advice, or his hand

on my elbow at least, I'm fiercely awake,

insomniac between sweat-drenched sheets

and a three a.m. silence that gives way

to cross-city sirens and, closer,

dallying homecomers' chat in the street.

Your absence makes me fonder.

Half-mad with deferred regrets,

as if here in your unindented pillow

were everything we might have been

or what little you've left behind,

the next hour labours like a week.