Backstreet Garden West Hendon.

I look out of the bedroom window at my garden,
A postage stamp of green
Stuck on a large square of concrete
Hemmed in by high brick walls;
A letter going no where.
I share this tiny space with wasps and woodlice,
Ants, worms, slugs, escargot, the occasional butterfly.
Once in a while a bee inspects the weeds and loganberries,
The roses taller than an average man.

I look up at the sun, a rare visitor to this scruffy bit of garden,
And watch its slow trajectory over roof tops,
The vandalised cherry trees.
An average star deep in the multiverse
Around which our planet hovers like a moth
Addicted to heat and guaranteed luminescence.
An average star once worshipped by Attic Greeks
As handsome Helios guiding unruly steeds.

Greek mythology still dazzles my imagination
As powerfully as when a child I read at school
A simplified text of Homer
That cut out all the gods and naughty bits.
I dote on visual images, not incontrovertible equations,
That is why the Attic Greeks made perfect sense
To a child who would rather paint than do his sums,
And had a taste for Keats, Shakespeare and Shelley.

My garden only catches the evening sun
When our ageing star is dipping in the west
En route to the hills of California,
Not the deeps of Okeanos and a well earned night in bed.
This patch of ground is so tiny, so inconsequential,
That passers by hardly notice it exists
When rushing to and fro from home to work,
Or making a bee line for the Claddagh Ring.
But I can sit outside in the golden hour of light
And read The White Goddess, The Guardian, Salman Rushdie,
The Bible, early Marx, my Homer with the suitors put back in.
Or set my telescope up at 9 o`clock - upon the garden table -
And look towards Andromeda, or the russet face of Mars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 18th. 2018.

Toy Box.

Writing my poems is like opening up a toy box,
A magical toy box packed with wayward puppets
That never obey the fingers that tug the strings,
Or lie stone still when packed away to slumber.
The Moor, the Ballerina, and china faced Petrouchka
Are placid little dolls compared to these
Creatures of mayhem and unreasonable frivolity
That try to take control of my comfy little world.

I dip into the toy box every now and then
Trusting luck, not judgement, as I seek for new ideas
Down in the secret depths of the old container.
Out pop a dazzle of colours, a free for all of images
Vying for attention, offering phoney love
As I try to formulate order out of chaos, find a meaning
Where a meaning never was. Eventually circles are squared,
Orderly lines are drawn, puppets put in their places
And taught to dance to the beat of the wizard`s wand.

All this seems to happen without help or hindrance,
Unplanned, unscheduled, no choreography assembled.
A meticulous brand new poem, all prim and proper,
Shapes itself onto the page, pirouettes out of the toy box
Without a "by your leave", or a nod of "thanks" to the author.
Okay. So that`s one more scrap of verse to slot into the folder
But how I came to write it, I really cannot say.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 14th. 2018.

Owl in Winter. (Revised).

Short days.
The cold nights encourage the work of the Owl,
Sharpen his appetite,
Test his skill.
Between the birth and death of the silent moon
He must make a kill.

Hunched in his jacket of wings
The Owl sits still and waits,
His heart scarcely beating. -
A precision crafted machine
Primed to perfection
By robot engineering,
His keen eyes, laser slicing the dark,
Scan the forest for prey.

The wind, incising the undergrowth like a surgeon
Employing a scalpel to make a perfect cut,
Reveals the zigzag movements of a vole
Darting for cover.
Keen eyes examine the trauma.
That instant life and death have just one face.

A cry stark as the winter forests
Acts as prologue to the deed of terror.
Quick talons grip and claw.

Wisely the Owl hones silence like a blade,
His iron secret,
A silence that hangs like arctic water
Knifing toward the snow.
This is the Owl in his moon cold fury,
The barb and craft of a dark vocation
His infinite skill.
Only the sunlight can mellow his actions,
Moulding his wings around sleep.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 18th. 1972. - September 6th. 2012.
June 17th. - 18th. 2016. - May 11th. - 12th. 2018.

Mill Hill. (Plus Note to Poem).

I love to walk in these fields at midnight,
Feel the earth breathing beneath my feet,
A stressed out mother deep in slumber.

I love to sit still on the south facing slope,
Watch galaxies pulse through magical skies,
A trillion heart beats in the tumult of space.

I love especially the warm June nights
When I can hear wandering foxes cry
Across distances only the fiercest would travel.

This is my dream time, private and holy,
When I can look further than daylight allows,
Or sense the depths lost far beneath silence
Where linger the ghosts of ancestral voices:

Ancestors who farmed where executives` houses
Now litter the fields where hay was once scythed,
And Wilberforce built his plain little church.

I love to walk in these fields at midnight,
The slope overlooks where the farm once nestled
Among English Elms taller than spires.

But the trees have all gone, and the grand little houses
Huddle together, row upon row,
Like strangers lost in the promised land.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
August 1966. - May 5th. - 6th. - 9th. 2018.

Note to Poem. This poem remains very much an example of the style that I was trying to achieve in the nineteen sixties when I was close to the London Hippies, but never fully integrated into their life style. While approving their interest in communal living and mysticism, I was critical of their lazy thinking and the taking of mind altering drugs. I sketched the prototype to this poem in 1966, but could never pull the various strands together to weave a completed picture. It was only when I discovered that members of my mothers` family had farmed fields on what is now the edge of the green belt to the north of London that I was given a context in which to place my ideas. They farmed the land as far back as the earliest years of the nineteenth century, and witnessed the building of St. Paul`s Church that was founded by William Wilberforce  because the handful of local villagers were having to walk several miles to attend the Sunday services. The suburban housing that encroached on the heights of Mill Hill in the first forty years of the twentieth century, seem banal and out of place in the context of the remaining fields and the ragged clumps of trees and bushes.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. May 9th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.2..

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.2..:       Distilled fear terrorises this vision of perfection, A tumult of lonely confusion snagged on the townscape Like a fraught dream that...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.1

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.1:               Distilled fear terrorises this vision of perfection, A tumult of lonely confusion snagged on the townscape Like a fraught d...

Delayed Spring. (Revised).

A week of snow prophesied.
Sirius scratching a chill clear sky
Confirms the weatherman,
His crystal ball proved accurate.

You say you want to move in with me?
Your camper not fit for purpose,
The motor defunct.
Parked under a grove of icicles,
The makeshift roof half off.

Yes, you had better move in with me;
Your presence on the sofa in the front room
Would make my house seem cosy,
Would bring the glitz of Eden that much closer.
And besides, you are not really a country girl,
Although you were born in a wagon,
The moon glinting through old lace.
Out in all weathers is not your style,
And we both hate living like hermits.

Yes, you had better move in quickly,
The heirloom that your grandmother gave me
Would easily fit your finger,
And you wont run off with my cash
The moment the weather turns fine.
Your honesty is not overrated,
You would rather starve than steal.

So burn that old camper, sell your dogs and chickens
To the lady who lives down the lane,
She will give you the price of your ticket.
Even if the snow should last a full year
Your smile will awaken my garden.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 26th. - 27th. - April 30th. - May 1st. - 4th. 2018.