(1) Palmyra Recalled. (2) The Rogue Doorbell. (Revised) (3) Cold Spring.

                    1.

       Palmyra Recalled.


I travelled down town to visit a memory,
A stone arch erected in Trafalgar Square
Untainted by the raw blood of Palmyra,
The heads of scholars mangled in the sand.
I touched the arch and dreamed the history,
The ancient texts and buildings we have lost,
Scrubbed out by the cruel winds of the desert,
Crushed to dust by crowbar, mallet, axe.

I count among my forebears western Shia
Who would not break a cup, a vase, a pot
Without recourse to tears, self recrimination
Because the labourers art had been defiled.
They could never bomb a town, murder a child
To sanctify this complex world for Allah.
For them divinity led them through the dance
And blessed the kisses husbands give their brides.

My family has always known that truth is beauty,
And not crushed ashes scattered under grass,
And so I touch this virtual Roman arch
To try and find the beauty we have lost.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 20th. 2016.

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                    2.

  The Rogue Doorbell. 


Ringing, without being touched
by the wind or an outstretched finger,
my doorbell, apparently with a mind
of its own, shocks me out of my nap,
my body curled tight in the Windsor chair,
my head pressed down on the table.

Perhaps my dream was a dynamo,
powering thought with invisible muscle
to ring the bell and wake me up
before my neck became permanently cricked
and my face was rubbed raw on the wood;
or perhaps there had been a minor earthquake

that displaced the delicate plastic buzzer
and shook the hallway with carillons.
I will simply remark, that when I lifted the curtain
there was no one in sight on the moonlit pathway,
the gate remained locked, the way I had left it,
with the latch pressed firmly down.

I settled back in my chair to think things over,
and then I recalled I had been dreaming of Leila,
an old flame I have tried to put out of my mind,
but my heart skipped two beats when I remembered her name.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 18th. - 19th. - 22nd. 2016.
August 29th. 2016.

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                    3.

           Cold Spring.


             Hazy moon
The eye of God full of tears
  Over the arch of Palmyra


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 21st. 2016.