Starlight Love Poem. (New Completed Poem).

This love I offer is not an empty token.

Cuddle up close against the winter night.
We are the same material as the stars
And should not fear this darkness.

The stardust in your eyes
Is far more ancient than decoded time
And cannot be snuffed out by simple night.
Love invokes an infinity of galaxies
With a single perfect glance
More radiant than a darting meteorite.

Love cannot be unspoken.

Huddle up close against the winter night.
We are the same material as the stars
And should disregard this ordinary darkness.

Spellbound by sleep, snuggled tight,
Cusped in charity of perfect loving,

Our dreams are bright with elemental power
Eliminating voids with dazzling light.
We are wise children of the universe
And should not be afraid.

Snuggle up close against the winter night.
Our love is stronger than reason dares. 

Our love cannot be broken.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
27th. September 2012.  - 4th. - 5th. - 16th. April 2022.

This is the corrected version I like the best.

Clog Dance. (Revised Version).

All my yesterdays - deep in my head
Telling me to write.

The gypsy woman - with eyes that pierced me
Telling me to write.

The Irish girl - who crashed my heart
Telling me to write.

The old despair - deep in my head
Telling me to write.

The English girl - who cleared the wreckage
Telling me to write.

Dead friends - who stayed for half one night
Telling me to write.

Dear friends - who stayed for half my life
Telling me to write.

The Yankee girl - with the white haired child
Telling me to write.

Her outstretched hands - breaking the dark
Holding me tight.

Her northern voice - soft as the night
Telling me to write.

Her father - telling me right from wrong
Making me fight.

Over the rooftops - wild geese in flight
The beat of their wings loud in my head
Telling me to write      WRITE      WRITE...........


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
26th. September 2012.  - 21st. February 2013. 
25th. January 2016. 

Planting Bulbs. (A Poem in Four Sections).

                                1

I slice open the summer hardness with a steel spade
Breaking through a scattering of stones and soil
Compressed into slabs more solid than flat rock.
The work is so tough that frequent rests are needed
Between the bouts of shoulder grinding spade work,
Hands raw, my back curved into a shallow C.

I stop to take a drink, and then another.
The flask you filled for me is almost dry.

                               2

Preliminaries completed, I shove a sack load of early bulbs
Deep into the swart earth, punching all down to no set order
With trowel and gnarled thumb. I pause to recollect
A decade of Springtime mornings in this our garden,
This discreet North London sanctuary, well hidden from
the neighbours. Here winters are usually drab, a miserable
inconvenience. I look forward to an abundance of loveliness.

                               3

Well that is enough hard grafting.
I put the kettle on the hob
And take time out for a sandwich.

Then the phone rings and rings.
You terrified in the surgery.

The cost of that IVF treatment 
Is completely beyond all reason. 
The doctor`s concern is the money, 
Not our welfare. 

Nor the child`s, no doubt.

I drop the phone on the step
and start to cut back the roses.-
Love is too often beyond our means,
Even you must see that. 

                          4

Quietly melancholic in this downturn of the year,
I sit and stare at the dun tilth. Maybe that doctor will find
The time to contact me, or then, more likely, not. Gardening
tools lie scattered over the patio, discarded bits and pieces
dropped by a desolate child. Without much interest I watch
An angle of shadow decline in steep slow motion
Across the irregular curve of the garden wall.

With one disaster digging out another 
It will take a good seven years to pay back that loan. 

The equinox provokes a distinctive shift in the weather.
I watch the steep descent of a watery sun.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - September 25th. 2012.
Revised March 25th. 2013.

First Time.

When you first caught me
I was frightened to life
Like a schoolboy having a prize flight
In a jet fighter.

The fairground horses that stood around us
Neighed their quaint approval,
But the morning grass was wet and slippy
Where their hooves had trod.

"So this is being grown up", I whispered
Taken aback by how easy it was.
You choked back a laugh, watching the clouds
Scudding over the same old sun.

Later you gave me a cigarette.
The smoke tasted of camp fire kisses.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
September 16th. 2012. 

Divorce

I was in the One Tun Public House in Goodge Street London when the Beatle Song "Norwegian Wood" was written; well the words at least. At the time I thought it was a piece of fun. Now I wonder what it was really about.I am still not sure that I will ever know.

           *

Norwegian Wood?

Memories burn bitter.

Black ash scuffed in the bedside grate.

Sheets grabbed and thrown.

The chair smashed.

"You Even Took The Radio You Bastard!" 

Silence is icy on Sundays.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
14th. September 2012.

A Response to Dorothy Parker.

    Men recover their senses
When girls wear contact lenses.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
September 9th. 1986.    
 

The Mad Hermit and The Owl.

The quotation in italics at the top of the poem is not exact, it replicates my first conscious response to the entry in the Intimate Journals of Charles Baudelaire dated 23rd January 1862, an entry that terrified me when I first came across it in the early 1970`s. I have included it here to help elucidate the poem. Goya and Yeats have also had some influence on the imagery.

The Mad Hermit and the Owl. 

"The wind of the wing of madness 
Last night passed over me." 

                         1

The Owl shadows the dark wood.
The Owl is the essence of night.
A silent hunter haunting the northern wilderness.
A desolate shadow descending through the pines.

                          2

I cannot sleep when his shrill cries pierce the moonlit forest.
I cannot sleep when his shadow falls across my window.

I cannot walk free, out of the moonlit forest.
I cannot escape the malignity of that shadow.

My darkened window reflects a sudden movement.
I panic and shake when he passes.

His wing beats echoing through the winter stillness
Awake dark fears in the depths of my mind.

                          3

In folklore the Owl is a bird of evil omen,
A lord of the underworld come to gather souls,
A portent of evil.
When I hear his shrill cries piercing the snow hushed forest
Those ancient legends flower like wounds in my brain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
May 23rd. 1974.-December 9th. 2003.-September 8th. 2012.

Owl in Winter.

Short days.
The cold nights encourage the work of the Owl,
A feral holocaust on the altars of Nature
Accomplished with impartial efficiency
Between the nightly birth and death of the moon.

Cloaked in his straight jacket of wings
The Owl sits still and waits.
A precision crafted machine
Primed to perfection,
His keen eyes cutting the dark like razors
Scan the forest for prey.

The wind threads like ghosts between bare trees
Shaking the undergrowth with tiny waves
That expose the darting movements of a vole.
That instant life and death have just one face.

A cry stark as the winter forests
Acts as prologue to the deed of terror.
Quick talons grip and dig.

Wisely the Owl hones silence like a blade,
His iron secret,
A silence that hangs like Arctic water
Knifing toward the snow.
This is the Owl in his moon cold fury,
The barb and craft of a dark vocation
His infinite skill.
Only the sunlight can mellow his actions
Moulding his wings around sleep.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
December 18th. 1972. - September 6th. 2012.  
Revised June 17th. - 18th. 2016.