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.
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