Whit Sunday Morning 2020.

Today is Pentecost, I change my coat
From winter wear to summer wear,
From a navy dye to a lighter colour,
Throw out the loose change from my pockets
And leave them empty of all but hope.

Today is Pentecost, the late Spring flowers
Spread across the garden pathways
Hiding the brutal slabs of concrete.
I tip toe carefully between green fronds
Not wishing to crush them beneath my boots.

Today is Pentecost, gusts of wind
Bend my rose trees, rattle the fences,
Lift slates and tiles from my neighbours roofs;
The old world seems to be falling apart
On this very morning of renewal.

I scrub my old coat in the kitchen
Then hang it out on the line to dry.
Today is Pentecost, the morning sun
Burns my face as I look to the skies.
Suddenly I clap my hands and sing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
31st. May 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: One Moment in May. (Newly Completed Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: One Moment in May. (Newly Completed Poem).: The heft of your love made me be still, The light in your eyes stung me with praise, Pierced me with sorrow, cut me to the heart Of all ...

Fly Past.

I welcome this fly buzzing over my food.
Someone brand new has entered my home,
A perfect stranger from a miniscule world
Unrestricted by Covid - 19 and lock down,
Someone who simply comes and goes.

If this fly has a name, I will not overhear it,
The name will be secret, locked in the fly mind,
A delicate speck of self consciousness
That gives the fly reasons for being a fly.
Each insect has its own small take on the world.

Folk are not as special as we think we are,
We can be killed by a spiky globule of fat
Invisible to the human eye.
Perhaps the fly can avoid what we cannot see,
It has five bright eyes on its little blue head.

This fly takes the loneliness out of the day,
It is a living creature sharing my house
That has been my monks cell for most of the
                                                               spring,
But sadly there is nothing we can natter about,
My life would seem meaningless to gnat or to
                                                               musca,

A dream that this fly will never encounter.
A fly is too buzzy to lie back and dream.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
17th. - 25th. 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Ascension. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Ascension. (Revised).: Slowly degrading memories. A signature on a testament. A photograph, paper thin and fading, Just like the pages of a discarded book, A ...

Advent Memories. (New Poem).

Slowly degrading memories.
A signature on a testament.
A photograph, paper thin and fading,
Just like the pages of a discarded book,
A paperback bought for a few old pennies,
Then left on a window ledge.
Sometimes the recording of a voice
Repeating the same old sentences
Again and again and again,
Petrified sound waves mocking a life once loved.

The bunch of bones left rotting in a coffin,
Appear to have no relationship,
No tangible link
To many of these magical artifacts,
These tokens left from a life that puzzle us
As we try to touch the past and make it real,
Bring once familiar faces back to life,
Warm and loving and full of joie de vivre.

The table that I work on is a hundred years old.
The polished top reflects my hand as though it

                                                     were a mirror,

A mirror of dark images

That are faded out the instant lamplight fails.

Is this all we leave behind us? A room furnished

                                               with forgetfulness

For other folk to live in, to remodel for themselves? 
Perhaps these fading images are everything we are;

Reflections of how other people dream us.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
18th. - 26th. May 2020. - November 29th. 2020.

A rewrite of the poem Ascension.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Hope on the Verge of Winter, 1969.(Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Hope on the Verge of Winter, 1969.(Revised).:          Through a glass darkly I perceive her Caught in the prism of former times, North London Girl Pale as the Arctic ice floes,    ...

Urban Mona Lisa.

Mona Lisa`s face without the smile,
A remote image reflected through long aeons,
Through smoke and countless tarnished mirrors
Onto the almost blank, unspotted page
Of an up to date young life.

This girl, sitting silent on the opposite side
Of the room to the alcove in which I lounge,
Has hardly learned her A to Zee, her 1 to 10,
And yet is ready to take on the world,
And shake her man with outrageous views.

No teacher could make her a slave to the rules,
No politician could hoodwink her with a lie.
She was born with a million years of knowledge
Stored in the silent depths of her mind,
A library waiting for the words to be formed.

But she knew what to say when she crossed the room
To sit with the man she had watched all night,
Her eyes dark with secrets only he can read
In the candle lit hubbub of the Peanuts Club.
"I too am a rebel", she whispered, then smiled.

The underpaid band bashed out folk songs
The singers raw voiced and well out of time.
"The audience are shadows", I quietly answered,
"But we two are dancers among the dud stars".
"We are the only stars here" she laughed, then kissed me.

"Have we met before? I know your face".
"My friends say I look like a famous painting,
Italian I think - of a pregnant woman".
"Ah yea". Mona Lisa, but a different smile;
A pizza in one hand, a pint in the other.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,
13th. - 14th. - May 2020. - December 5th. 2020.
The first line was jotted down 1962 / 63, in the Peanuts Club,
a Folk, Jazz and Poetry Club that I frequented when a teenager.
The club was demolished when Liverpool Street Station was
modernised and extended.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Crescent Moon in March. (Newly Completed Poem)

Trevor J Potter's Art: Crescent Moon in March. (Newly Completed Poem): Weeping into the hollow shell of my violin I remember the last time we were together And try to fill my lonely hours with music. The he...

One Moment in May. (Newly Completed Poem).

The heft of your love made me be still,
The light in your eyes stung me with praise,
Pierced me with sorrow, cut me to the heart
Of all I believe, of all that I know,
Or think that I know,
When I look deep in the glass in the hall,
Or far in your eyes when you kiss me to sleep.

The heft of your love is weighted with voices,
Your history and mine extolled in unison
To make a new song, completely different
From the simple lyrics we sang in the loneliness
Of our single lives        before we had met.
A new song that lacks words, plain words cannot fathom
The depths of this love that is all that we are.

The heft of your love made me be still,
Made me take stock of the life I had led
Aimlessly searching for facile diversions
In strobe lit fairgrounds and West London flats.
This laughing boy ceased to riot and fool
From pub to pub, from party to party.
The light in your eyes stung me with praise.

The light of your love out dazzles the stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
8th. - 29th. May 2020.

I am using the word heft in all its meanings.

Tragic Song and Chorus. The World is my Sustainer. (Revised).

                     1.

The world is my sustainer,
My true mother,
But I am not so kind,
I do not love her
And could, without due care,
Annihilate her
As easily as my goshawk snatches rodents
From between the broken branches.
                 
                    2.

This night is free of cloud,
I scan the sky
With my binoculars
To watch the dance of stars
But cannot find them.
The raw lights on the distant motorway
Dazzle my aching eyes,
They are all that I can see.

                Chorus.

Perhaps we should abandon mega cities,
Relocate to villages and hamlets
Where neighbour cares for neighbour,
And folk are not confined to tower blocks.
Perhaps we should prohibit factory farming,
Sow meadows with wild flowers, ban pesticides,
Perhaps we should close banks and supermarkets,
Let bracken overgrow the petrol stations.

                        3.

The world is my sustainer,
My sacred mother,
But I am not so kind.
I have not loved her.
I have wrecked the ozone layer, poisoned oceans,
Torn down ancient woodlands, melted glaciers.
I have clogged the mountain streams with shreds of plastic,
Turned wheatfields into deserts, incubated new diseases.

I have disrespected Mother Earth,
I have endeavoured to enslave her.
I have created a new dark age, a time of dislocation,
I cannot see the dance of stars through the city lights.
The world is my sustainer,
My tragic mother.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 19th. - 23rd. 2014. - April 30th. - May 1st. - 3rd. 2020.