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 A City Meadow                    Reeds at Brancaster Staithe

                 Generations                    Andrei Kushkov

 

A City Meadow

i.m. Julia Casterton

 

A butterfly flits into our meadow of wild

flowers, swishes her scarf over her shoulder

and asks me to introduce myself

and are you married?

 

I explain my wife has died. Oh,

she says, We’ve got a widower.

After I’ve read my poem, she turns

like a sonnet,

 

alights on a familiar phrase, and says

If you can say that in a different way Peter,

please let me know, it may be rather difficult

but well worth trying. Then she’s gone,

 

fluttering off, hovers over a cowslip,

Hello Helen, what have you been writing?

 

Peter Phillips

published in 14 Magazine, Summer 2009

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Reeds at Brancaster Staithe

 

If I believed in ghosts

this is where I would find them, crouched

close to pale waterways,

 

in reeds darkened by mud and water,

a glow of golden straw where they reach

for warmth in the salty air.

 

Only the marsh harriers would glimpse

them as they screeched overhead

in a tumble of earthward plunges.

 

Quicksilver sea grumbles into the staithe,

nudges the hull of a row-boat,

its paint old and peeled.

 

Clouds smudge the sky.  I hear

the rustle of reeds, a whispered

conversation between lovers,

tremulous, coming in on the wind.

 

Peter Phillips

in collection Wide Skies, Salt and Best Bitter, 2005,

Hearing Eye, ISBN 1-905082-03-7

 

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Generations

 

To My First Wife 

 

The clock in my head strikes back

to your death.

 

Our daughter is having a baby.

I wonder if you know.

 

 

To My Daughter

 

You say you can’t stop laughing

when you learn you’re having twins.

 

I hope you’re still laughing

in six months’ time.

 

 

To My Grandchildren

 

I can see you in that cramped space

feeling the certainty

 

of your mother’s heart,

looking out for each other.

 

Peter Phillips

published in Brittle Star, 17, Summer 2007

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Andrei Kushkov 

 

I answer box in Postcard Monthly, ten years go.

I write, say I send religion cards, cards of synagogues.

He writes me quick, say he pays price cards he like.

 

I asking he send dollars to Olga in Helsinki —

no letter to St Petersburg.  We no speak.

I register cards.  He register dollars.

 

Ten, twelve letters year I sending.  He pay Olga

for stamps also.  Olga my girl... girl friend you say?

She have yellow hair down back.  She my bank,

 

my pretty bank!  I see Olga, we go bars.  We drink

red wine to Mister Fineman.  I sending cards,

he sending dollars.  We drink, laugh, do much love.

 

Mister Fineman happy.   He pay quick always.  

I pay kopeks, he pay dollars.  I much happy —

Olga best bank in Helsinki.

 

Peter Phillips

published in Orbis, August 2008

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