Seashore at Hoda. (Revised).

 In the background

The pastel sea is calm

Speckled with white sailed boats.

In the foreground

Rough waves scourge the rocks

With turbulent whips of salt.

Two lone men walk the narrow path

Between the broken cliff face and the sea.

They are separated by a gulf in time

At least a century wide,

Unbridgeable to them,

But to me - visible in a single glance.

The cliff face towering high above their heads

Appears to have been gouged by giant claws,

Or the teeth of dragons fighting for their lives.

There is only the slightest breeze this evening,

Just enough to keep the boats in motion.

September paleness,

The sea a pastel blue

That I have only seen in films and fading dreams,

And the sky is split into three shelf like layers,

Indigo - Duck Egg Blue - a misty shade of Orange.

The darkest colour - a thick band at the top of the page.

The distant shoreline seems blurred and indistinct,

A smudge of green indicating hills

With perhaps a town or two.

And high above all, transparent in the orange light,

Mount Fuji stands, a god without a conscience,

An ice cold Buddha keeping all his secrets,

Sketched with three thin lines of printers ink.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

September 24th. 2021.

Poem No.9, Month of September, ref my calendar illustrated by Hiroshige prints. 

September Sunset. (Revised).

Autumn in the air. Although I refuse to take note

Of the slow decline of late summer sunlight

Into a watery softness,

                                     I have switched the heating on

                                                          from time to time

And packed my sunglasses away until next year.

I cannot yet face the sadness of falling leaves,

Rain drops on my dirty windows meandering like tears.

                                        I do not want summer to end

And so I try to imagine that the days are still as warm 

As in the last week of July.

Then the slow easing down into deep August.

Then the parks filled with children running wild,

Their mothers picnicking at a safe distance.

Dogs, scampering off their knotted leashes,

Chased by irate owners.

Yet already I am nostalgic for mid winter pastimes,

Tchaikovsky on the CD Player conjuring magic snow,

Books open on the kitchen table, the pages, stained and

                                                                           thumbed,

Bent back to mark some paragraphs of interest,

Whole sentences underlined with pen or pencil.

I rarely open books in spring or summer.

When the sun is high books are left on shelves,

Their ageing covers fading in the glare.

But September is here now, neither summer nor winter.

A picturesque interlude, a time of waiting, of watching

                                                                       the apples ripen.

(Smart children sneak into my neighbours garden

To clamber quietly up into the branches).

And so, having closed my books, I sit by the door and listen

To the quiet voices of strangers in the street

Strolling at ease, unhurried while the daylight lasts.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

September 12th. - 13th. - 14th. - 23rd.- 24th.  2021.

Primitive London, The Scene in the One Tun Goodge Street. (Revised).

Watching that old film was a mistake.

My pictured friends - blurred images

Animated to an analogue soundtrack.

My on screen presence - confined to a Scene

Long since revised for the history buffs.

Truth left rotting on the Cutting Room floor

To make more space for reductive legends,

Legends filtered through static and snowfall

That reconfigure a well known view.

Everything I knew turned upside down

To fake a sanitised story.

When I review mementoes of the nineteen sixties

I view them as shadows, the shadows of dead dreams

Darkening the gentrified inner city neighbourhoods

With stains of hidden histories.

When I wander through Soho, or Fitzroy Square,

I search for landmarks that are no longer there,

Airbrushed out of time,

Their relevance disregarded.

This was my home patch, my manor so to speak,

When I was a wannabe poet and actor

Trying to get laid, and sometimes writing songs.

I was twenty years old, I knew every backyard,

Every cul-de-sac, every alley and stair well.

I knew that fetid archway near Rathbone Place

Where junkies hunched close in clandestine huddles

In fear of the shadows of passing strangers.

I watched them slope off to derelict stables

Where they slept on floors in old sleeping bags.

I spent some afternoons in the Greek Cafe,

And that is where I first met my girlfriend.

She offered me an apple across the round table

As we sat sipping Turkish Coffee.

Watching that film was a bad mistake.

Some faces on screen are lifelike ghosts

That I can pin names to, but never meet.

Big John is dead, so too is Jailer Mick,

And also, I suppose, kids I can`t now name,

Scoffing at the camera to mock their audience,

And that right now - alas - is me.

And they were right to scoff, 

I can no longer lord it in that crowded Bar

Although my image stands out on the screen.

I am a passing stranger - an old face at the door.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

August 13th. - 14th. - September 8th. - 9th. 2021 - March 9th. 2022.