(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.