(1) January 31st. (New Version). (2) Harrow Weald Bus Station.

                     1.
            
            January 31st.


Already it is the last day of the month,
the New Year stacked with school books,
not now an infant snuggling at the breast,
eyes half closed, torso smeared with blood,
mouth wide open, shaped like an angry O,
but a schoolboy carrying mobile phone and scycle
as he trots off to his lessons.

I sit here shivering at an open window
and count greenshoots nudging through the rough.
I wish I was now outside in the garden,
but in kinder weather, trees coming into bud,
House Martins, louder than my radio,
watching a wary cool cat saunter passed;
and frost a scrap book memory.

An ice bright moon floats high above the rooftops
immune to our enslavement to the seasons
and the irksome ticking of the bedroom clock.
My girlfriend phoned to say her time had passed
and that she has been sick the last few mornings
so that she cannot leave her room.
                                  I take a look at the calendar,
count back the days to when she last lay with me,
then flick the pages forward to September.

"Is this all that life brings to the table", I quietly grumble,
"a rushed parade of births and deaths and marriages?"
I visualise a smart kid playing football,
a schoolboy larking as he quits his class.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
31st. January 2016. 
Completely rewritten 31st. August - September 3rd. 2016.


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                      2.

Harrow Weald Bus Station.        A collage.


The old man toddling home,
His bags packed with shopping,

The schoolkids do not see him,
They rush by in a swarm.

Life is precious to him.
A pale sky turning crimson.

The high street packed with traffic.
The sound of sirens shrieking.

The school kids bunch together,
They fight to board a bus.

The old man turns a corner:
A parked car blocks my view.

Far above the rooftops
Floats the lonely moon.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 22nd. - 23rd. 2016.
This poem is just a list of events written down as they happened in real time
at dusk on January 22nd.The old man is aged 91 and is a long time friend.

(1) Country Girl. Revised (2) In Ancient China. (3) Song of the Steadfast Servant.

                            1

                   Country Girl.


Funny,
I always think of you with light coloured hair,
Not black, dead straight and thickly lacquered
But windblown and burnished, reflecting the sun;
A hand combed tangle hiding a nest of glittering
                                                                     fireflies,
Or so it seemed. How else could I have explained
those dazzling highlights to myself & to my friends?
But now neat artifice seems to be all the rage,
and everything natural tied back, disguised
and not allowed to mar the urbane icon.
Thus we descend from bright youth
to an artfully glamorous old age
that glosses over reality
for no apparent
reason.


& yet, nowadays, you sing with a delicate sweetness
Far out of your range before,
& I am touched to the heart by this new transcendent
                                                                          beauty,
So bright with the love that passed you by when young.


Oh forget past times,
Forget plans left half done,
They are just old notes scrawled on a bedside scrap pad
Too small to make a fire.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 27th. - 29th. 2016.

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                           2.

In Ancient China fish were thought to carry messages.


           You have fish for supper most evenings?
            Perhaps I should drop a message into the sea
            And hope that it reaches you.

            I still love you
            But how will you ever know
    this
            Living alone in your room.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 27th. 2016.

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                       3.

The Song of the Steadfast Servant.


Found true
love is
when all else
is lost.

Found true
as the Lamb was
among the thorns
and rocks.

Found true
on Golgotha
when the Temple fell
to dust.

Found true
love is
when all else
is lost.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1973.
January 29th. 2016.

(1) The Real Singing Blackbird. (2) The Girl Who Sailed Away.

                 1.

The Real Singing Blackbird.


Sitting in Trafalgar Square
Watching the fountains play
With the fragile winter sunlight.
This is where, decades ago,
Almost a lifetime in fact,
Although I can hardly believe it,
A blackbird with crippled wings learned to fly,
Her song loud and clear on the airways,
Her maiden flight caught by the cameras
As she upstaged the pert little pigeons,
Those hop and skip procreators,
Those snafflers of cake and sandwiches
Who, like most on the make urban scoundrels,
Do not care for sublime miracles.

This is where I grew up,
Watching the world pass by,
Writing in secret my poems
While the tourists cackled and snapped.

This is where I grew up,
Walked with my very first girlfriend
On every other Sunday.
Here we sat still to observe
The mysterious white wigged lady,
Shrieker of old Beatles numbers,
The occasional Bob Dylan moanathon
Whilst preening her rapier nails.
On the morning that I am thinking of
She was waltzing alone in the fountains,
Her pink brolly floating aloft.

London, my city of dreams,
Fulcrum of half crazed memories,
How can I ever portray you
In a single, fazed out poem,
That takes a side swipe at the truth?
Perhaps I should mention the taste
Of French cigarettes on my tongue,
The deafening chatter of starlings,
The heat of my girl in my arms?
Or perhaps I should write of that blackbird
Soaring far above the Wren steeples,
Rehearsing a banquet of love songs,
But then stealing my secrets away.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 31st. 2015.
January 26th. 2016.

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                2.

The Girl Who Sailed Away.


We walked under eucalyptus trees
Your hand at rest on my shoulder.
You have lost your South London vowels,
Perhaps our friendship has faltered;


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 3rd. 2015. - January 15th. 2016.

(1) Donegal Sunset. (Revised) (2) Josephine.

                1.

    Donegal Sunset.


Noctilucent clouds,
delicate threads of gauze
drifting on the atmosphere
high above the islands,
the softly murmuring sea.

translucent fabric binding
the arctic blue stillness
with delicate spider threads
of woven webb bandages
fifty miles high.

These threads seem to hold
the Nordic sky together
as though it were the sail
of a viking longship
drifting like a dying gull
into the final darkness.

I stand at the very edge
of the ancient seascape
on a solid ledge of granite.
The stillness keeps me company,
keeps me from the modern,
the autistic internet world
just a step or two behind me.

The walk has made me breathless.
My thoughts now come and go
in sclerotic fits and starts
that make too little sense.
My body aches and shivers
although it is midsummer
and the air is not too cold.

The cormorants skirl above me.
The shimmering skein of clouds
add lustre to the twilight,
a delicate luminosity.
this light seems to shut time down,
transfigure this west coast cliff face
into a holy mountain,
or perhaps a broken reliquary.

And for a moment the world seems strange,
remote from all I know.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 18th. - 19th. 2016. - April 22nd. - May 26th. 2016.
August 31st. 2016.
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                 2.

          Josephine.


You may be an ultra rough diamond
But the first time that I saw you at the campsite
I had never seen a girl more beautiful
Or more worthy of the jewels I could not buy.

And the first time that we really got together
You touched my heart like no one had ever
touched my heart
                             in all my live long days.

Well, after thirty years it seems we are still a couple
Despite misunderstandings,
The long years spent apart,
The long haul journeys made for just an hour or two
                                                                       together.

And although hard cash remains a constant problem,
The bankers deaf, the loan sharks at our throats,
Perhaps one day I will purchase a paste tiara
                                To place on your nut brown hair.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 19th. - 20th. 2016.

(1) Vision on a Snowbound Sunday.(New Completed Version). (2) Sunny January Morning. (3) Early Morning Tea.

                  1.

A Vision on a Snow Bound Sunday. (New Completed Version).


Jesus walked alone in the wilderness.
The foxes clapped their paws and sang.
The trees blossomed in midwinter.
A dead woman gave birth and cried.

Jesus walked hand in hand with Buddha.
The midday sun merged with the moon.
The foxes danced with flocks of geese.
A dead woman gave birth and laughed.

The two wise men sat down to pray;
Their shadows merged into one lotus
That floated gently like a mirage
Shimmering light upon the desert.

 Centurions arrived dragging crosses.
They threw their spears but missed the mark.
The two wise men danced and sang.
The crosses became a grove of willows.

The lion lay down with the lamb.
Two dead children awoke and played.
Two dead mothers danced together,
Their fingertips ablaze with roses.

Deep in the desert the Buddha and Jesus
Calmed the hearts of the fierce Centurions,
Sent them to live among poor shepherds,
Taught them that love is an obligation.

Praying together among the sand dunes,
Jesus and Buddha laughed and sang.
"In laughter I glimpse kensho", said Buddha.
"To dance is to enter Heaven", said Jesus.

Jesus walked hand in hand with Buddha.

The desert blossomed in the shade of their words.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 17th. - 18th. 2016.  - May 20th. 2021.


                   2.

Sunny January Morning.


Bare trees against a blue sky.
Black cracks across an icy pond.
If I skim a flat stone
Will the sky break and fall?


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 15th. 2016.


                  3.

 Early Morning Tea.


    Milk in green tea? How strange.
But it looks so beautiful in my red cup;
     Dawn mist on an autumn lake.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 5th. 2016.

(1) Aphorism Murmured at the Edge of Sleep. (2) Rain at Midnight.

                 1.

Aphorism Murmured at the Edge of Sleep.


You whispered to me as I switched off the light,
"If you cannot remember being born,
perhaps you are not alive."
And then you laughed out loud under the duvet.
Laughing like a schoolgirl high on candy.

Loving you is another kind of dreaming.
In the workaday world you simply do not happen,
A clock ticking but seldom keeping time.
When I long for sleep you kick start into life,
A rock solid presence, not a will o the wisp in denim,
Not a flurry of feathers called out by the band.

I held you first as a newborn baby.
Now I hold you as a full grown woman.
The chrysalis forty years a breaking.

I wondered then what you would be like at forty,
Little thinking that we would share our lives together.
I imagined a princess, not a highly strung punk rocker,
I thought the chick I waltzed around the ballroom
Would stay like that forever.

And oh yes, I do remember being born,
And so I can be booked among the living.
It was a journey packed with trauma,     so very like our love.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 11th. 2016.

For Josephine.

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                    2.

     Rain at Midnight.


Rain forecast on the radio
A steady sound of clapping
No footprints on the patio

At night the closing of doors
Can become a private ritual
A prayer against the darkness

Not spoken          but enacted
Just moments before sleeping

While rain taps on the patio

A steady sound of clapping


Trevor John Karsavin
January 14th. 2016.

In Japanese religious practices, including Buddhism, to clap can be a part of praying.

(1) Watching War and Peace Adapted for TV.(2) My Mother`s Fine kimono. (3) Dragon. (4) A Note to my Son in Law....

                1.

Watching War and Peace Adapted for TV.


Little snippets of War and Peace shown
                                           on television.
Little shredded snippets, not the full fat book.
Torn leaves soaked in adolescent blood
falling
            falling
                        falling.
            Falling onto white white snow.
            Nothing real. Nothing really Russian.
Plastic picture post cards flashed onto a screen.
Tourist Board Dickensian. English without tea.
And all the time I hear my great aunts voice
Crying in the wilderness of London.
           "Oh show us who we are, please do not
                                                      mock us.
For Christ`s Sake show us who we really are!"


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,
January 10th. 2016.
------------------------------------------


                2.

My Mother`s Fine kimono.


My mother wore a kimono
Even though the eastern war
Had made Japan unpopular.

The dragon sketched in silk
Was a small defiant symbol
From a culture bombed and burned.

Politicians come and go
Like shoddy goods they are expendable,
But a burnt out temple cannot be replaced.

Nor can an ancient manuscript of haiku
Praising resting by a mountain river
More highly than a skill required in battle.

A thoughtful neighbour washed the fine kimono.
The dragon melted in a sea of colour.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 9th. 2016.

Early in her life my mother learned a love of Japanese culture. Her pride and joy was the fine kimono of the poem, and she was criticised for wearing it during the latter part of the Second world War by less understanding, less forgiving neighbours. The kimono was ruined in the wash.

       --------------------------

                    3.

               Dragon.


The dragon in his lair is not alone
Despite eternal solitude.

Distant scholars have remembered him.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 13th. 1971. - January 9th. 2016. 

For David Bowie. 

      ------------------------------

                     
                    4.

A Note to my Son in Law to thank him 
for obtaining Three Tang Dynasty Poets.


Three Tang Poets have arrived in the post.
They are all old men who drink lots of tea.
If I stumble on their long beards I am lost forever.

Meanwhile I await the arrival of old Wang Wei.
Transport is slow. His ox is the problem,
It just wont negotiate the gateless gate.

Meanwhile I sit and contemplate my wayward garden,
Daffodils in January break all the rules;
Next summer I may travel through a barren land.

Thank you for these books, they are perfect for my library,
When the blossoms wither I shall quietly sit and read,
That ox groomed and tethered, out of sight and out of mind.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 8th. 2016.

An email sent to my son in law thanking him for the safe delivery of a book.

(1) Stockhausen Recalled. (2) One August Bank Holiday Monday. A Lyrical Interlude.

                 1.

Stockhausen Recalled.


My voice went into the machine.
The composer played his trump
                                          card.
An infinity of sounds emerged
Weaving new worlds in the air.

Hearken
how the new worlds developed.
Houses of cards rise and fall.
At last there is only the memory
Slowly degrading.

Permanence seems a reflection.
    Loft high a well aimed stone.
         Even the frame falls apart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 6th. - 8th. 2016.

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                   2.

One August Bank Holiday Monday.


The first night that we spent together,
Our hearts were singing like the woodland birds
At bright midsummer.

Your body that soft night was lithe and supple,
Slim as a windblown Weeping Willow
Pictured on Chinese porcelain.
You moved beneath me in the summer stillness
To the twinned pulsing of our mutual breathing
And whispered covert words of gratitude
Into the scrunched up pillow.

You were not scared,
And goaded me with kicks and thumps to love you,
Although you once had spied from a dark corner
The slow and painful birth of your small sister;
Your mother screaming, the bedspread soaked in blood.

You held me close all night,
Denied me sleep,
Kicking me whenever I turned over,
Turning my back on you.

Alas we knew the morning would be bitter,
We had to make our separate tracks and travel
To long haul destinations
Too many miles apart.
Indeed we had no clue
When next our paths would cross

And we could snuggle down in bed together
And squabble the whole night through.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.  
June 22nd. - November 28th. 2015.
December 5th. 2015. - January 3rd. 2016.

This is a complete rewriting of a poem first posted in June 2015. 

(1) Stockhausen on the Radio, A fly in the Room. (New Version). (2) Bus Stop.

              1.

Stockhausen on the Radio, A fly in the Room.


The small black dot
Whizzing about this room
Is not a mote in my eye,
It is a single insect, a
speck of ash
Left over from last summer
That thinks now is spring
Not winter,
Not the season of rest,
Of forgetfulness,
And that the kitchen window,
Steamed up and  frosty,
Is the icy face of the sun.

This insect is displaced,
A refugee from distant times,
A hot house country
Beyond recovery,
Beyond imagining.
This buzzing feral dot,
An ink blot on the greyness,
The smoke stained ceiling paper,
Reminding me
That when I chucked my school pen
In extremis
One nerve wracked day in class,
Only that day of many
In the packed and rowdy classroom
Could not be forgotten.

Fly, instinct nags hard at me
That I should swat you dead,
Splat your little head,
Change you into garbage;
And yet we should be friends,
We are both outmoded here;
(Me, four decades passed my prime,
You, a snap shot of September);
So let us keep the peace
Come hard nights and icy weather.
The clocks are ticking fast,
We can squat down in this fusty pad together.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 4th. - 12th. 2016.

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               2.

        Bus Stop.


Girl with a thousand futures,
Why do you look on me so kindly
As I wait here at the bus stop?

I am not exactly God`s Gift,
An old guy wrapped in a rain coat
Who even the whores hurry by.

But I am grateful for your kind looks,
They remind me of that moment
When the whole world was my oyster,
Believing myself young and gifted

Until I prised open the oyster shell
And dared to look inside.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 5th. - 6th. 2016.

(1) Footnote. (2) First Footing.(3) Bliss. (4) Japanese Tea Ceremony.

                 1

           Footnote.


        This year in which I write,
    Is now last year somewhere else;
The ticking of the clock wears me out.


                  2


         First Footing


        New Years Day.
Breaking out of the cocoon.
 All the house is sleeping.


                 3.

           
             Bliss.


Japanese porcelain
Gives me a sense of peace
No Buddha or Christ
Can give.

Put the roses over there, by
the chair, the wicker chair
by the window.
Put them on the small table:
The rough old vase will do.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 31st. 2015.
January 1st. 2016.

--------------------------------------

                 4


Japanese Tea Ceremony.


Welcomed the New Year with
the Tea Ceremony,
More holy than the Eucharist.

No wine was spilled.
No bread was broken.
No images of ancient cruelty.

Just a peaceful hour or two at home:
Rain soft upon the window,
Daffodils blooming in the garden

More abundant than last spring.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 2nd. 2016.