Trevor J Potter's Art: This Maundy Thursday Night. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: This Maundy Thursday Night. (Revised).: Kneeling in the silent chapel I study the blank walls where my favourite icons should be and sense the infinite shadowing me in a cold ...

Palm Sunday 2018. (At Home).

I love my house
My monastery
My hermitage upon the hill
Where I can sit and read my books
Paint my pictures
Write my stories
Dream my dreams in solitude.

I love my icons on the walls
The Cross of Christ
The smile of Buddha
The saints in their gilded worlds
Tallis on the radio.
I love the simple things of life,
Solid chairs and tables.

I love the strength of wood and stones,
Simple food on china plates
Tea fresh from the farmer.
I love the look of ancient books
Parables in ink and paper,
They lose their lustre in the sun
Like daffodils at Easter.

I love the heft of Cranmer`s words
Rock solid in their meaning.
I love the choirs of migrant birds
Singing in my garden.
I love the stillness in my house
When I kick off my weathered boots
And close the door behind me.

I love my house, my quiet place,
My church without an altar.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 25th. - 26th. 2018.
The best present I received last Christmas consisted of packets of tea straight from a farm in India. (I do not use the word Plantation because that reeks too much of the British Empire). Also, in many ways I prefer Lent and Holy Week to Easter Day, probably because it is a time of study and contemplation. The pale beauty of the daffodils symbolise this time of year for me, after Easter the gaudy fairground colours of summer come roaring in.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Non Creative Walk About. (Revised)

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Non Creative Walk About. (Revised): I took a poem for a walk Around the houses, Looking for a place to settle, To store our goods, Our clothes and chattels, To safely cal...

Two Poems. (1) Equinox. (2) The Ripples Spread.

                    1.

             Equinox.


This I have waited to see
                for a long time.
The spring sunshine
Cutting the ice to ribbons,
Melting the snow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th. 2018.


                   2.

   The Ripples Spread.


Last night I heard your voice
Calling my name
Out loud to the stars that seemed
                                          as still
As stones glistening under water;
You alone in rural Leicestershire,
I in my London house. -
You had not used your phone
                   to contact me,
To share with me the hurt
That open wounds of long term
                         separation
Inflict upon our lives.
You simply cried out to the
                         Milky Way,
And my house became the fields
Through which you walked,
The ceilings opened to the silent
                                              stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th.2018. 

The Wrong Picture. (New Poem).

I did not know that pain
Could come back with such intensity,
Could spike deep a second time.

The girl in this photograph,
So like an old girlfriend,
An acquaintance from the 1990`s,
But no, not her, not her.

The street is in the wrong country,
The sky too pale a blue,
Too Wind flower blue,
Too Nordic, too washed out.

I drop the magazine in the bin,
There go my thoughts of yesterday,
Just so much retro garbage.

Must I always fall in love
With lookalikes of long lost friends?
Exist in a sepia world
Of fading reproductions?

No, but I am thinking of a different street,
Of poplars bending in the wind,
Kinder at play, their parents dozing
On verandas dark with vines.
Germany 1991,
The heat almost Mediterranean.

The girl in this magazine photograph
Would pass me by without a glance
If we met on a crowded side walk.
But her pale blue eyes, her mousy hair,
The tilt of her smile towards the light,
Are dangerously familiar.

I retrieve the magazine from the bin -
Then discard it once again.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 25th. - March 18th. 2017.
March 19th. 2018.
Retrieved from disorderly scraps of a poem jotted down last year, then completely rewritten.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Miranda. (Revised Version)

Trevor J Potter's Art: Miranda. (Revised Version): Miranda You do not know how beautiful                                        you are Hiding behind your hair                           ...

Miranda. (Revised Version)

Miranda
You do not know how beautiful
                                       you are
Hiding behind your hair
                                 and glasses,
The broad brim of your hat,
The book pressed to your nose.


Your mind,
            a makeshift dolls house
Lost deep in shady groves
On Prospero`s magic island
Is labelled, Out Of Bounds,
The blinds drawn down,
The door closed tight,
The key lost deep in leaf mould.
It seems that wary Prospero
Has tied you to his will
With infinite chains of shadow
That only love can break.


Miranda,
I am your father`s servant,
Perhaps one day you will stun me
                                  with a smile
Awakening birdsong
Echoing Ariel`s call
As he breaks free from the pine tree
That had been his prison cell
For twelve years and a day,
Meantime I dream you picking at ideas
Snatched from the books that pack your
                                        father`s library,
Flinging them high into into the island
                                                        air,
But not watching where they fall.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,.
July 13th. - 2017. - March 13th. - 14th. - 18th.2018.
Whose thoughts are these, Ferdinand`s or Caliban`s?   Both, in very different ways, could describe themselves as being a servant of Prospero. One as the prospective son in law, but temporary prisoner,
the other as the enslaved former owner of the island. Both, in very different ways, were attracted to Miranda like moths to the flame. Both suffered burns, administered by Prospero.

Harsh Times

Knocking on my window
The shadows of lost children
Trying to break through
Or is it just the rain
Or is it just the rain
Trying to break through
Wash away the glass
That keeps me dry and warm
That keeps me safe not sorry
While the wind knocks down the chimneys
And lifts the mossy slates

Knocking on my window
Knocking on my window
The homeless unloved children
Rough sleepers lodged in doorways
Beggars in the subways
Hands cupped for gifts of money
Hands bruised and red with cold
Shadow children pleading
While their matches flare then die

I turn over in my bed
To try to get some sleep
But all the time the knocking
But all the time the knocking
Shadow children knocking
Trying to break through
Trying to break through
The gypsy in the ditch
The orphan in the doorway
The match girl in the snow

Tonight beneath the bridges
Huddled into cardboard boxes
The homeless watch the rain
The homeless watch the rain
While I lie snug in bed
Warm as toast and safe not sorry
But all the time the knocking
But all the time the knocking
The shadows of lost children
Trying to break through


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
March 12th. 2018.
In recent bitter weather I saw a homeless man at the entrance to London Bridge Tube Station trying to keep warm by striking matches. People were passing by staring deep into their magic phones but seeing nothing. We may be technologically advanced but morally we are stuck deep into the sticky quagmire of inequality that polluted the 19th. century. We may have wi-fi and high-fi and messages stored in the air but in other ways we are stuck in the 1840`s. Dickens is still a contemporary writer.

The Return of the Traveller.

Displayed by the window
My miniature rose tree
Greets the hubbub of dawn
With a whisper of Spring
That lisps through the whole house.
It lights up your smile when you call.

This time your radio
Is packed in your suitcase
Along with the shower gel
Your pants and your nightie
Your copy of Oliver Twist.
You seem to be planning
A long term vacation,
Much more than a year and a day.

Your spot on the sofa
Has now been made ready
The cushions plumped up
The footstool in place.
The fridge has been stocked
With your favourite goodies
Along with the the milk shakes
The meat and the veg.

I have trimmed my rough beard
To eliminate straggle,
But believe me I wont cut it off.
And please keep your trainers
In the rack by the back door
And don`t scrub your teeth in my bed.

I have set down the lamp
By the miniature rose tree,
Closed the thick curtains,
Dimmed the bright light.
Our love is not blind,
It glitters with wonders.
I smooth down the duvet
And kiss you goodnight.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 8th. - 9th. 2018.
Since early childhood I have loved Alice Through the Looking Glass, and to a lesser extent, Alice in Wonderland. I think we all spend our lives balanced between fantasy and reality, even when we appear to be at our most concentrated and alert. I particularly love the state of mind present in very vivid dreams, and those hazy moments poised between waking and sleeping, when nothing is certain, nothing is concrete.

Memorials. (After listening to Madama Butterfly on the radio).

                    1.

My paintings are the poems
I cannot write,
Songs without words
Preserved in stillness.
Likewise the photos,
Static portraits of far off times
Silent
Silent
Ice cold                           silent.
Memorial stones bereft of flowers.

                    2.

Your signature
                              In my pocket book
Is dated 1967.
A vivacious moment in a too short life
Preserved forever on a yellowing page.
None of the photos that hang on the wall
                                              Are vivid
As this singular word
Shaped to the rhythms
That danced in your voice.

                  3. 

My paintings are the poems
I cannot write,
Butterfly carcasses
Pinned behind glass.
They shadow the stories I cannot speak,
The sorrow      too deep      for language. 


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 4th. - 5th. 2018.                   

Trevor J Potter's Art: Last Night I Became Aware of the Beauty of Wood. (...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Last Night I Became Aware of the Beauty of Wood. (...: Last night I became aware of the beauty of wood, A beauty I had been taught to disregard By parents in love with modern things, With gla...