Sunday 28 August 2016

Two Dream poems. (1) Random Thoughts in the Herb Garden, Southwark Cathedral. (2) Rogue Doorbell. (Revised)

                          1.

Random Thoughts in the Herb Garden, Southwark Cathedral.


I went and dreamed in my memory of the chapel,
sat and studied the herbs that now grow there
to create a metaphor of the resurrection,
vivid new growth amongst the broken stones.

"My head is like a sieve", the old woman cried;
"pour words into my ears they fall straight off my lips
then evaporate into the empty air".

"But nothing is really lost", I thought as I sat there
amongst the herbs and heaps of broken stones;
"I can see the shape of the chapel outlined in the raw earth
just like the carcase of a stranded ship.

I would like to haul that Drifter out of the sand,
restore the splintered mast, precarious against the sky
but daring me to climb".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 28th. 2016.
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                            2.

               Rogue Doorbell. (Revised)


Ringing, without being touched
by the wind or an outstretched finger,
my doorbell, apparently with a mind
of it`s own, shocks me out of my nap,
my body curled tight in the Windsor chair,
my head pressed down on the table.

Perhaps my dream was a dynamo,
powering thought with invisible muscle
to ring the bell and wake me up
before my neck became permanently cricked,
and my face was rubbed raw on the wood;
or perhaps there had been a minor earthquake

that displaced the delicate plastic buzzer
and shook the hallway with carillons.
I will simply remark, that when I lifted the curtain
there was no one in sight on the moonlit pathway,
the gate remained locked, the way I had left it,
with the latch pressed firmly down.

I settled back in my chair to think things over.
It seems -  when the bell rang -  I had been dreaming of Leila,
a lost companion I have tried to put out of my mind.
I can feel my heart pounding - right now - as I type her name.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 18th. - 19th. - 22nd. - August 29th. 2016. 
June 23rd. 2020.

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