Trevor J Potter's Art: This Maundy Thursday Night. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: This Maundy Thursday Night. (Revised).: Kneeling in the silent chapel I study the blank walls where my favourite icons should be and sense the infinite shadowing me in a cold ...

Palm Sunday 2018. (At Home).

I love my house
My monastery
My hermitage upon the hill
Where I can sit and read my books
Paint my pictures
Write my stories
Dream my dreams in solitude.

I love my icons on the walls
The Cross of Christ
The smile of Buddha
The saints in their gilded worlds
Tallis on the radio.
I love the simple things of life,
Solid chairs and tables.

I love the strength of wood and stones,
Simple food on china plates
Tea fresh from the farmer.
I love the look of ancient books
Parables in ink and paper,
They lose their lustre in the sun
Like daffodils at Easter.

I love the heft of Cranmer`s words
Rock solid in their meaning.
I love the choirs of migrant birds
Singing in my garden.
I love the stillness in my house
When I kick off my weathered boots
And close the door behind me.

I love my house, my quiet place,
My church without an altar.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 25th. - 26th. 2018.
The best present I received last Christmas consisted of packets of tea straight from a farm in India. (I do not use the word Plantation because that reeks too much of the British Empire). Also, in many ways I prefer Lent and Holy Week to Easter Day, probably because it is a time of study and contemplation. The pale beauty of the daffodils symbolise this time of year for me, after Easter the gaudy fairground colours of summer come roaring in.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Non Creative Walk About. (Revised)

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Non Creative Walk About. (Revised): I took a poem for a walk Around the houses, Looking for a place to settle, To store our goods, Our clothes and chattels, To safely cal...

Two Poems. (1) Equinox. (2) The Ripples Spread.

                    1.

             Equinox.


This I have waited to see
                for a long time.
The spring sunshine
Cutting the ice to ribbons,
Melting the snow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th. 2018.


                   2.

   The Ripples Spread.


Last night I heard your voice
Calling my name
Out loud to the stars that seemed
                                          as still
As stones glistening under water;
You alone in rural Leicestershire,
I in my London house. -
You had not used your phone
                   to contact me,
To share with me the hurt
That open wounds of long term
                         separation
Inflict upon our lives.
You simply cried out to the
                         Milky Way,
And my house became the fields
Through which you walked,
The ceilings opened to the silent
                                              stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th.2018. 

The Wrong Picture. (New Poem).

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

The girl in this photograph,
So like an old girlfriend,
An acquaintance from the 1990`s,
But no, not her, not her.

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

I drop the magazine in the bin,
There go my thoughts of yesterday,
Just so much retro garbage.

Must I always fall in love
With lookalikes of long lost friends?
Exist in a sepia world
Of fading reproductions?

No, but I am thinking of a different street,
Of poplars bending in the wind,
Kinder at play, their parents dozing
On verandas dark with vines.
Germany 1991,
The heat almost Mediterranean.

The girl in this magazine photograph
Would pass me by without a glance
If we met on a crowded side walk.
But her pale blue eyes, her mousy hair,
The tilt of her smile towards the light,
Are dangerously familiar.

I retrieve the magazine from the bin -
Then discard it once again.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 25th. - March 18th. 2017.
March 19th. 2018.
Retrieved from disorderly scraps of a poem jotted down last year, then completely rewritten.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Miranda. (Revised Version)

Trevor J Potter's Art: Miranda. (Revised Version): Miranda You do not know how beautiful                                        you are Hiding behind your hair                           ...

Miranda. (Revised Version)

Miranda
You do not know how beautiful
                                       you are
Hiding behind your hair
                                 and glasses,
The broad brim of your hat,
The book pressed to your nose.


Your mind,
            a makeshift dolls house
Lost deep in shady groves
On Prospero`s magic island
Is labelled, Out Of Bounds,
The blinds drawn down,
The door closed tight,
The key lost deep in leaf mould.
It seems that wary Prospero
Has tied you to his will
With infinite chains of shadow
That only love can break.


Miranda,
I am your father`s servant,
Perhaps one day you will stun me
                                  with a smile
Awakening birdsong
Echoing Ariel`s call
As he breaks free from the pine tree
That had been his prison cell
For twelve years and a day,
Meantime I dream you picking at ideas
Snatched from the books that pack your
                                        father`s library,
Flinging them high into into the island
                                                        air,
But not watching where they fall.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,.
July 13th. - 2017. - March 13th. - 14th. - 18th.2018.
Whose thoughts are these, Ferdinand`s or Caliban`s?   Both, in very different ways, could describe themselves as being a servant of Prospero. One as the prospective son in law, but temporary prisoner,
the other as the enslaved former owner of the island. Both, in very different ways, were attracted to Miranda like moths to the flame. Both suffered burns, administered by Prospero.