Amedeo Modigliani.

These faces are not masks,
The thick layers of make up
Accentuate beauty,
Change fault lines into graceful
                                  highlights,
Flatter strong cheek bones.
The jobbing critic must have
                  screwed up his eyes
When confronted with such
                     graceful opulence
Dragged from the streets of Paris.
He did not see what even I can see
As I hurry passed.


And look how sensitive the glance
                                      of her eyes,
This girl with the raven hair
Looking shyly back over her shoulder
Into the gaze of the artist
As he maps her exposed body
Stretched awkwardly onto the old
                                      single bed.
He works with the skill of a cartographer,
Or a surgeon. His concentration absolute
As he guides the fine brush.


He studies her body with the eyes of
                                        the sculptor
He once was
Before the stone dust scoured tubercular
                                                  lungs
And forced him to revert to paint.
Perhaps he paid her more
Than the customary five Francs.
Perhaps he just could not afford to.
Something about her makes me think
                                                  this girl
Was a favourite model,
Someone he cared for more than a means
                                                to an end,
Someone he respected
And would speak to in the street,
An equal not just an employee.
A young girl who saw through his professional mask,
Who was aware of his vulnerability.
Something in the tilt of her head
Tells me this is true.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 3rd. 2018.

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                           ...