Two Poems. (1) A Miracle on the Northern Line. (2) Water Lily. (Poem One).

A Miracle on the Northern Line.


The woman with the red hair
Laughing on the tube train,
I do not know her story,
I only know her laugh.

However,

The walking stick held tightly
By the old man sat next to me
Burst into May blossom
When her fingers touched it,

Yet

The old man, being blind,
Could only smell the perfume
Of the yellow May blossom,
That faded when he cried,

So

I tried to save the blossom,
Could only feel the cold air
Sifting gently through my fingers
As I stretched out my hand.

The hot brakes slammed.

Bank for Monument Station.

Familiar faces vanish
In the crowd.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 26th. - 28th. - 29th. 2016.

----------------------------------------------------

              Water Lily.


Girl, hair kept long,
Flowing like a river
Over the landscape of her body
Down to the narrow ankles
Tensed, just like a dancer`s
Pirouetting en pointe.

Eyes, equatorial blue with longing,
Peering sadly at the grey shore
Of our northern island.
Eyes, sad oceans, deep with thwarted love.

I watch her sleeping in her narrow bed.
Perhaps she sails that ship she often talks of
To a dark, uncharted land of broken vows,
Far darker than the loneliness that breaks me.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 29th. 2016.
February 25th. - March 3rd. 2017.

Time Capsule.

The last present you gave me was a cactus.

Well, that is what it was all about then,
not the long drawn out kisses on Hampstead Heath,
the rain falling.

          On the other hand, the forty something years
between the first kiss and the last
have been full of incident,
strange events not looked for in the Almanac
that only listed births and marriages.
Death is something missing from published horoscopes.

My home was like the Zoo, you often said;
in fact you took a shine to my one eyed woolen bunny
and my pre war tin giraffe.
Four generations of independent cats
lodged at 115,
furring up the kitchen,
lugging dead birds home to lay upon the door mat,
pummelling flies.
They have shuffled off their coils since our first night enchantment,
our first stroll in the park,
our first snog in the dark,
when we believed that we would live forever,
and a single kiss could speed us to the moon.

Well we were children then - well - more or less,
too young to vote, yet old enough to marry,
your first born nipper soon to kick your belly;
not our love`s child, but a gift from St. Tropez
one drug skewed summers day
in the arms of a counterfeit Count, or some other Hippy lover.
Our dreams became burnt cinders after that,
but I still kept your slipper safe at home
to place upon your foot if you should come to stay.

And call you did, two weeks before you died,
to present me with this cactus I now care for
upon the doorstep    where the cats had slept
before they soft shoed out on one last sad foray.

But I have not quite finished setting the world to rights,
this cactus was not the only gift you proffered,
there were also those two pots of Dorset honey
and that long sad wistful         unexpected kiss.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 21st. - 22nd. - 25th. - November 16th. - 24th. 2016. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: Stillness Perfected. (Four poems sketched in the B...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Stillness Perfected. (Four poems sketched in the B...:     Jin Ding Ware. Black dish with copper rim. The beauty of darkness set against the white of the adjacent vase. Simplicity more lu...

Stillness Perfected. (Four poems sketched in the British Museum).

    Jin Ding Ware.


Black dish with copper rim.
The beauty of darkness
set against the white
of the adjacent vase.
Simplicity more luminous
than porcelain dragons.

                *


              Stone Buddha.


          The Amitabha Buddha.
             At peace in Nirvana
          but forever earth bound,
       standing on the marble lotus.

  I wish I could find your stolen hands.
Then you could clap them hard and sing.

                *


        November Rose Buds.


The black bowl compliments the ewer.
The refinements of a perfect marriage
adding grace to the breakfast table.
Those rescued stems I placed in the vase.
I hope their buds will soon unfurl.

                *


Ming Dynasty Porcelain Bottle.


Two Blue Birds.
A pure white sky.
Summer and winter fused together.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 19th. 2016.

Written in the Chinese Ceramics Gallery of the British Museum.

The Miraculous Draft of Fishes.

The kettle had steamed up the kitchen windows
and I was reminded of the London Fogs
of long since departed damp Novembers
when the autumn reds and yellows softly faded
into greyness, just like my grandmother`s Victorian
prints of Raphael`s tapestries.

The whole of my childhood in one sepia moment
flickered deep in my mind, then retreated back
into the labyrinthine libraries
where chains attach my oldest memories in leather covers
to shelves of dusty books that are rarely touched
except, perhaps, when an unexpected event fidgets the keys.

Thus it was when the steam fogged up the kitchen windows
taking my thoughts back to those simpler days
when Raphael`s picture of The Miraculous Draft of Fishes
seemed to hint at an innocence that I cannot now retrieve.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 15th. - 16th. - 17th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: December Daffodils. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: December Daffodils. (Revised).: Daffodils in December? I wish they would fold back into sleep, we can wait a little longer for the spring. Your face on the pillow; th...

December Daffodils. (Newly Revised Version).

Daffodils in December?
I wish that they would fold back underground,
we can wait a little longer for the spring.

Your face on the pillow;
the pale features of a Tang princess
perceived beneath still waters.

Your features, awash with dreams
that cleanse the lines and blemishes
from beneath your long eyelashes.

The moonlight on your still face
turns your skin to silver,
silk soft when I touch you.

Solstice pale, I watch you
sift through your secret images
that are locked in coral palaces.

But wherever your dreams now take you
you remain as calm and quiet
as a Buddha on a lotus.

Yet for you sublime satori
is found when you kiss your lover,
not alone in caves of silence.

Winter is the shortest season,
we could just as well sleep through it,
fierce storms a distant murmur.

Daffodils in December?
I wish that they would fold back underground,
we can wait a little longer for the spring.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 23rd. 2015. - November 11th. - 12th. 2016.
December 18th. 2019.