The Reckoning.(Revised)

And now the whole picture slides into focus
slowly
            just like a reflection in the water
becoming meaningful to the dazzled eye
           as the waves subside into flatness,
and reeds stand upright like a line of soldiers.
                                                               

For a moment my whole life seems to flash
                                                     before me,
I am not dying, and yet I now must learn
to love simplicity, to clear the clutter from my
                                                                home,
to banish from my day arcane obsessions,
to make new every morning,
to love my neighbours more than love myself.
                                                           .

Self analyses is something that I have often
side stepped,
but for thirty years I have never truly loved,
I have only felt the wasp sting of desire,
and to admit this makes me grieve for those
                                                        I`ve hurt.
I have become a silent witness to my own life,
a hollow space, dug out and filled with echoes
by too many broken
                         lives.


But now someone is calling out to me to help her,
keening in the shadows of her sorrow,
                        imploring me to open up my heart.
And I must walk with her,
                                            confront her darkness,
walk with her and listen to her story,
                                          and learn to understand.


Tonight we sat together by the lakeside
and watched the pictures form, then break apart,
then form again once the breeze had settled.
"Are you really here with me?" She kept on
                                                            asking.
"Or are you just a shadow in the dark?"



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 21st. - 22nd. 2016.
March 9th. - 10th.- 11th. 2017.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Bethlehem Angel.(New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Bethlehem Angel.(New Version).: The plaster falls away, And gradually, Like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, The gold angel is glimpsed Shimmering in the dusty...

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Door Stop. (New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Door Stop. (New Version).: I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon when my name should have been up high in lights burning holes in the Broadway sky thro...

(1) The Wrong Picture. (Revised). (2) Chinese Seascape.

                    1

     The Wrong Picture. 


The girl in this photograph,
so like an old girl friend
but, not her.

The street in the wrong country.
The sky too pale a blue.-
Wind flower blue
too Nordic, too washed out.

I did not know that pain
could come back with such intensity,
could spike deep a second time.-

Joy,
a phoenix rising in the heart
on transient wings of flame.

The past,
a paradox of light and shade,
a place where hope seemed natural.

I drop the magazine in the bin.
There go my yesterdays.

                   

Seedlings planted out in May
always reached maturity,
our tiny plot of moss and flowers
out glitzed the tarmac gardens.

My nervous fingers slowly stretch
across the qwerty keyboard
searching for an answer.

Must I always fall in love
with faces that are similar,
live in a world of mirrors?

Hoping that this image
may reflect a better future
I return to the photograph.

I am thinking of a different street.
Poplars bending in the wind.
Kinder at play, parents dozing fitfully
on verandas dark with vines.

The girl in this photograph
would pass me on the side walk.
Her image in this magazine
has warped my sense of time.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 25th.- March 4th. - 17th. - 18th. 2017.
-------------------------------------------------------------

                      2

        Chinese Seascape


Balsa islands in a black sea.
White swans drifting.
Even I forget the pace of time.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 18th. 2018. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. (1) The Old Fox. (2) Russian Summer Hol...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. (1) The Old Fox. (2) Russian Summer Hol...:                     1 .           The Old Fox. The chiming of the chapel bells sounds like the music of Caliban to the ears of the Sun...

Two Poems. 1. The Old Fox.(Revised). 2. Russian Summer Holiday. (Revised).

                    1.

          The Old Fox.

The chiming of the chapel bells
sounds like the music of Caliban
to the ears of the Sunday fox.


He sniffs the air for tang of hounds
shouldering their litheness through
bracken and hedgerows
under the hefty shadows of the horses;
the men the colour of blood.


But this morning the air is as fresh
                                     as it can be,
only the scent of willow and herb,
the distant odour of grazing cows;
and from the village, so calm and settled,
the Sunday morning sting of incense
that sometimes accompanies the morning
                                                           bells.


High over the steeple, an indistinct cloud
is perhaps a veiled threat of incoming rain,
a reminder that spring, the most volatile
                                                      season,
is marked with the tears that drenched Golgotha.


Now feeling a little less uneasy
the fox turns away up a track hedged
                                         with thorns.
For a few more hours he can stalk his
                                                     prey
safe in the itch of his skin.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 8th. - 28th. - March 1st. - 2nd. 2017.
--------------------------------------------------

                    2.

Russian Summer Holiday,

The grey bearded man is very fat,
His paunch the size of a whiskey barrel.

A quartet of girls sway in a circle,
The steps of the dance their prime concern.

If his feelings get hurt they wont give a damn;
Their somnambulant grace weaves a delicate pattern.

Sand smothers their legs in tobacco yellow
As they sail on the drift of self hypnoses.

Down by the farm beside the seashore
A fox lies in wait for the farmhands to sleep,

And the sun turns the ocean to molten iron
As it sets behind the jet black hill.

The quartet of girls wander home together.
The grey bearded man glares up at the moon.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 24th. - February 8th. 2016.
February 28th. 2017.   

Trevor J Potter's Art: Random Thoughts in the Herb Garden, Southwark Cath...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Random Thoughts in the Herb Garden, Southwark Cath...: I sat and dreamed in the remnants of the chapel, sat and studied the herbs that now grow there to create a metaphor of the resurrection, ...