Stranger in a strange land

This poem was inspired by the music 'With You' on the album 'The Land Where the Sun Slumbers' by Ivan Smirnov, a Russian Musician that I got to know in Moscow.

With You

I had drifted many miles,
Sifted air with wings of light,
But only knew my destination,
When you joined me in my flight.

Wing to wing to a distant shore,
Dancing in an endless sky,
Faced the world as friends, as one,
A brothers’ love, our eternal tie.

Our lives made laughing pirouettes,
As the waves kissed the setting sun,
But like the tide our music flows,
And of my song the ebb has come.

I've reached the sunset of my life,
I cannot reach the distant shore,
No new horizons with the dawn,
We’ll fly together never more. Copy Write of Joe Munford

Today I am at home with my wife and children, who joined me from Russia back in 2005. This time of year, safe and sound on home turf always seems particularly special to me. This is thanks to a very difficult winter spent in Moscow which remains one of the toughest psychological challenges I have had to face. Using a combination of annotated diaries and memories, I would like to tell the tale of 2 years living in Russia and moving in very strange circles. I learnt a great deal about myself and life during those years. This is a story of perseverance, love against the odds and triumph over adversity which I hope you will find entertaining if nothing else. For context though, my story begins in Oxford, where I had a memorable meeting… (Extracts from my diaries are written in italics).

Friday 1st September 2000
Getting up this morning facing a day of waiting for K to come home from work so that we could head in to London, I did not expect to meet Zoe Peterson. As I wondered the historic and imaginative back streets of Oxford I found a park which led down to the river and boat houses. As I wandered a tree lined avenue I saw a person who looked Russian throwing tree branches to a herd of eager old English cows. She asked me to help her lift a branch then we sat and chatted about life. She was an artist and poet who used to lecture international economics at Oxford and who found solace and meaning in drawing trees in their various forms, believing that they reflected the state of the world. She gave me plastic bags and we went off to collect black berries. We agreed that there is a need to destroy negative features of nationalism and that people are essentially the same, fighting against the elements to survive.
I cannot describe here how calm I felt after this two hour encounter. I reminded me of the lady I met in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. She gave me a picture she had drawn of Joseph, a pigeon that perches on her hand to eat proffered food. The inscription was what she imagined Joseph to be thinking – ‘why don’t they use their wings?’ My thoughts reflected…