Red Bird. (Revised).

My poems are pictures 

painted with words,

and not true poems.

For example -

Aware of the intensity of sunlight

as July approaches

I rejoice that colours now zing off the canvas

hot and vibrant.

Flamenco colours

Shimmering in the sun.

This morning I watched a red bird dive and soar,

Cutting the blue haze with the edges of her wings

that beat with a frenzied fierceness.

I blinked, the sky was empty,

the distant woodlands silent - but

across the blue

a deep wound slowly opened

oozing crimson blood.

I tried to put this vision down on canvas -

with the first paints that came to hand.

Acrylics do not keep their lustre

unlike oils that always seem alive

with an inner light - a fresh vitality.

That red line I slashed across the canvas

is less vibrant now the paint has dried.

Memory is like that line,

it lacks the vivid intensity of moments

lived with red hot violence.

An adolescent kiss.

A quick fire brutal slap

imprinting traces on cheekbone and skin.

A strange red bird

swooping on prey as the dawn breaks. -

My memory of that red bird is debased

dulled by these words that I am typing -

and the picture I have sketched.

But the picture has a reality I can grasp,

Solid as this floor on which I stand.

Words are black and white upon the page.

I love the dangerous energy of colour.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

June 19th. - 20th. - 21st. 2022.

Dedicated to Malcolm Evison. A socialist poet and painter, and a good friend.

Summer Solstice at The Grave of Anne Bronte. (Revised).

Those good folk who know the worth of books

Have given Anne a new memorial,

A plaque resistant to the coastal storms

That have pitted the original limestone slab

With savage cuts and scars

Gouging deep a once immaculate surface.

The words I could decipher when a child

Transformed into gritty knots of lead.

The new memorial is a plain and simple plaque

That names her father, but not her two great novels,

And thus replicates the original injustice

Against her creativity and gender.

I sit beside the grave and try to come to terms

With how everything that makes a life worth living

Eventually breaks apart. But I can never be a stoic

And accept all that I value has no meaning.

A group of listless tourists, tied to an agenda,

Tick their check lists as they dawdle by.

I suspect Anne Bronte is just a name to them,

The girl who did not write Wuthering Heights.

Anne is the sister too often underrated,

But she was the toughest of her clan,

Speaking sharp and fierce to those folk

Who hate the truth when it is clearly spoken.

Her honesty has brought me to this hilltop

To sit and mourn her youth, but also to imagine

That I can be as honest as she was,

And not to hold my tongue when life gets brutal.

Trevor Joh Karsavin Potter.

First drafts, 26th. - 28th. 2017. - July 11th. - 12th. 2018. 

Rewritten June 5th. - 6th. 2022. 

I first drafted this poem in Scarborough in 2017, but I was very tired having been working hard at a conference the previous few days so I only managed to produce a very rough sketch. The second draft was still a very rough version and I left it thus until I should feel ready and able to work on it again. Thus five years later I have come up with this much more concise version that I do like, and is more or less the poem that I originally hoped to write.