Multi Cloured Leaves: In Memoriam Vivienne Westwood. (Revised).

Multi coloured leaves are falling - falling,

Floating down stream, the water calling them

With wistful songs, known to every flower and tree,

To horses, birds and foxes.

Children too are sensitive to these sounds,

That is until we adults shout them deaf.

Perhaps Ophelia, so sensitive to plant lore, 

Heard this wistful music and chased its thread

Almost to the depths of the Atlantic.

Vivienne heard it too, but sang it out raucously

While weaving brilliant colours, more stunning than 

                                                             plum blossom

Seen from a window after mist has faded.

Multi coloured leaves are falling - falling:

Truth is beauty, but is not always the loser.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

December 30th. - 31st. 2022.

Lost from the Lights of Christmas: December 1965. (Revised Ending).

 Her remembered voice seems to haunt these streets,

The stucco terraces and tree lined pavements

Transfigured into white light by the chill

Of frosty winter mornings.

Was it New Year, or the short days after Christmas,

When we last cuddled up beneath old bedding,

Her pregnant belly warm as a summer evening,

The child within fidgeting like a kitten,

Or a sleeping lioness longing for the sun?

Was it then, or just a few weeks earlier?

After sixty years recollections become less vivid.

We felt as though there was no room at the Inn,

Outsiders watching the stars dissolve in snow clouds. 

Her husband permitted these secret trysts, for some reason;

Perhaps he understood the depths of love,

Or was it that he guessed how short the time we had 

And needed this reconciliation.

Meanwhile, in the streets outside, daily life went on,

So like a mindless clock measuring the hours

But not able to calculate the reason.

The following summer she died, but not before shaking

The somnolent wards awake with one last laugh.

She had spied her baby giggling 

At radiant pools of sunlight floating on the walls.

"If I dared be as innocent as my wee bairn,

Then surely death would not be such a problem".

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

28th. - 29th. December 2022.

The Fourth Wise King Explains his Motives.

Speaking soft words to the quiet dark

I attempt to meditate upon tomorrow

But find only a loneliness

Bleaker than the arctic wastes. 

If I were a wise king searching for enlightenment

I do not think that I would trust

A weirdly dazzling eastern star

That illuminates a small cave in war torn Bethlehem.

But I would listen to my inner voice

As I hovered on the edge of sleep

And therefore imagine it said in dreams

That miracles always lead to trouble.

But when curiosity has forced me awake

It seems that I might outface my loneliness,

Pack my bags in the freezing dark

And set out to study that star,

But understand this, this would be for science,

Certainly not to discover a Saviour;

I can never guess answers before I set out,

And always doubt what I see.

Yes, I admit, the others were right,

They trusted their instincts and did not look back:

I am still on that journey, so it now seems,

But its not in my power to confirm this in speech.

Yet when I sit silent in the quiet dark,

What I dare not understand begins to make sense.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

December 21st. 2022.

According to some ancient legends twelve Wise Kings set out to follow the star, but only three made it to the Bethlehem stable to offer their gifts to Jesus. I identify here with King No. 4 because he had many doubts and yet had a modicum of faith.

Far West Dreaming.(Completed Poem).

This sympathy for The Outlaw -

Where does it come from?

I would have hated to have been Sundance -

Holding up mail trains and robbing banks -

Rampaging through bordellos with Pinkerton

                                                  on my tail,

I am too much of a hermit for that sort of thing,

A Zen Buddhist with a liking for old Jesus,

(I love Tenebrae but don`t fetishize the theology).

But to ride a half wild pony across the prairie,

That is my perfect heaven;

The dawn wind hitting my bare face -

The raw sun burning my cheek bones:

And every bird and tree and cloud so wondrous

I would never crave to enter a city again. 

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

16th. - 17th. December 2022.

A Cold Awakening. (Now Revised and Rewritten).

A flash of white light stings me awake.

I throw off the sheets and break the ice,

Peel back the curtains away from the glass

And stare into the garden.

Such dazzle of snow is a shock that stuns,

Knocks me out like ice in the eyes

Whipped up by a speeding sleigh.

The sky is a fierce miracle this morning, 

A concave mirror, diamond bright,

Brilliantly blue, but chill as the arctic.

Perhaps I can lob a stone to shatter it,

Skidding the stone across the surface,

Crazing clear space. A broken window

Somehow staying in place.

 

 Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

15th, - 16th. December 2022.

Pictures for December Nights.

 

Aztec Fish.

Retrieved from a block of clay

An unknown fish,

Extinct, or simply unobserved

By Mexican scientists who search 

The blacked out depths

Of the deepest pits in the Atlantic.

Perhaps it was born the colour of the red earth

And was promoted to godhood by the Aztecs

Because of this weirdness,

Or perhaps not.

All that can be said for certain

Is that this is a very odd fish.

And will not be found laid out with the salmon in Harrods

Anytime soon.

Trevor Jon Karsavin Potter.  

1st. December 2022.