September 7th. 2014. (Revised).

The hushed day slumbers.

Sunlight ricochets off white walls
and stings my tired eyes without mercy.
Almost out of sight my neighbour`s cat
mimics sleep in a clump of grass.

The first Sunday of September,
a day set apart for an archaic ritual,
the baptism of a firebrand baby.

Inside the church the drifting incense
made my skin feel dry and dirty. -
Outside the heat sizzles off wide pavements
scorched into glass by the slanting sun.

I lean against the old lychgate
sipping a cup of ice cold coffee.
I note how empty the street has become
now the congregation has prayed and gone.

Deep in the thicket that shades the churchyard
a squabble of birds ricochet through branches
watched by the cat with steel blue eyes.
A few red leaves fall like confetti.


Deep in my bag the Blackberry rings,
it is time to go home and cook the dinner,
but a love of the past keeps me captive here
mesmerised, as though in a West End Theatre,
by a world to which I do not belong.

A strict timetable rules my life,
and I try to think why we cling to rituals
when the natural world is packed with wonders;
then I notice the cat bustling through the thicket,
her small mouth grips a ball of feathers.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. 2014.
September 20th. - 30th. - October 11th. - 12th. 2015.
August 20th. - September 6th.2016.

This is a poem about the moods generated by a stifling hot day in late summer, not about ideas. Thoughts just drift through the mind as though the writer is not fully awake.