Blackthorn Snow.

                       Blackthorn Snow.

Blackthorn snow, sudden, but not inconsequential. 

Unexpected storms break the rhythm of the year,

Especially in March.

I walk across the white hills searching for a trace

Of your introspective smile

                                             - Of your bell like voice

 In the wind shaken trees - in cloud shadows 

                                                        skidding over

The moist springtime snow.

My footsteps are the only ones that mark this path.

All around me I see blankness.

It was at Easter I first met you.

Easter nineteen sixty four.

You walked into the cafe and offered me an apple

From your knitted bag,

                                     (Your bag of tricks I named it).

You were only fourteen, but seemed five years older.

I was barely twenty one, naive and full of talk.

We spent hours discussing Braque and Dostoevsky,

The existential dramas of Sarte.

That day was nearly sixty years ago now,

In a very different city, a different century, a different

                                                             millennium.

A time far more honest than today. Far more intellectual.

(Perhaps I am growing old, but hope now seems grotesque,

                            a clown with rotted teeth and matted hair.

We then had Kennedy, that tragic morning star).

Our friendship lasted almost forty six years,

But then you crumbled beneath the surgeons knife,

A blazing light too easily extinguished, too quickly

                                                            turned to ash.

I walk across the white hills calling out your name.

There will not now be an answer.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

March 25th. - 26th. - 27th. - 28th. 2021.

For Zoe Harris, gone ten years already