A vision of chiaroscuro
The lilt of your voice down the telephone
Describing a June sunrise
I listen to your words and imagine
Spring sunlight filtered by new leaves
Flickering through your hair
You wanted to make love by the lakeside
But too many strangers were passing
And we were too much in the light
Now the phone is our only direct link
- Apart - that is - from telepathy -
To keep us in touch through the winter
- You seem so distant - yet with me -
Words fade more quickly than visuals
From my incomplete backlog of memory
Just a few pert comments remain
Photographs have been claimed to be factual
But they are merely flat shapes on a surface
They are static - a likeness is just an illusion
Photographs are the language of stillness
They can never convey your vitality
Nor your living presence beside me
Emerging from sleep in the dawn
A vision of chiaroscuro
The lilt of your voice down the telephone
Describing a June sunrise
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
December 13th. - 14th. - 16th. 2020.
This poem can be read as a Round,
*
The Gift.
The piece of clear rock crystal that I gave you
With your Christmas Card and the letter sealed
and marked as Private
Is a token of fidelity -
Something for you alone
Keep it safe
Nothing else that I have had the chance to give
you
Has such an ancient history
Or a future half as long -
This crystal will survive all we can know
It holds no secrets - it shows the facts like any
bedside mirror -
It has no magic - only fools think that -
But the truth it shows is deep within us both -
It is the clarity that love gives to our living
When we stand face to face - honest and without
fear.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 21st. 2020.
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