Friday 29 July 2016

Между заминаванета/Between departures



It takes little more than the suggestion
of a road to set me off.

The light’s particular
fall on woodland and that promise
of distance recall other terrains,
other journeys made or intended –

and how only last month
scrub silvered hillsides
and mist plumed a lake
en route to a different return.

No, it doesn’t take much to set me off.

A dispersing tangle of vapour trails
is merely the most obvious and I’d go
at the chance of those figs, that coffee,
the cut grass beside half-finished houses,
figures of sand dusting dry pavements
and the noise of headlines left behind.

No, it doesn’t take much to set me off.

And as the suggestions come ever thicker
ever faster, it would seem that – as in
those lines from a poem I’ve yet to write –
the urge to get away isn’t very hard to foster.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips