Trevor J Potter's Art: This Year December is Bleaker Than Ever..

Trevor J Potter's Art: This Year December is Bleaker Than Ever..:     The oceans are losing their oxygen. Fish are choking - like children on smog. It seems that winter comes early this year.     Rivul...

This Year December is Bleaker Than Ever.(Revised).

       The oceans are losing their oxygen.
  Fish are choking - like children on smog.
Before Autumn dawned the red leaves fell.

    Rivulets of hair on a white pillow.
Soto calligraphy that can only be read
           By her attentive lover.

    She drops the newspaper onto the floor.
Gently she drops it - tears smudge her cheeks.
How could she live in this world without him?

His tenderness dances in the black stream of words.
       Only he understands the depths of her grief.
 Only he understands why she weeps this morning.

      "Our unborn children cry out for their lives.
Should we listen to them - or succumb to our fears?"


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
7th. - 8th. - 13th. December 2019.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Wave. The Month of February. (New Re-written V...

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Wave. The Month of February. (New Re-written V...: We forget the boats Barely buoyant in a trough of raw sea. The giant claw of water poised above them Dominates this blue world Almost c...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Tussy. .

Trevor J Potter's Art: Tussy. .: Tussy was not buried, Not swaddled by black earth Evolving into hillocks and                         dark hollows Gradually, season by ...

December on my Japanese Calendar. (New final line and other changes).

The first tea plants grew from the eyelids of Bodhidharma
When he snipped them off to keep himself awake
During long days and weeks of meditation.

Old legends cannot always be believed in
Although they are attractive enough to be almost true,
And green tea has a taste as sharp as Zen.

But no meditating monk would need a bowl of tea
To keep awake in this fearsome winter weather,
The sky an ice sheet mirroring the snow.

Three men, almost invisible beneath broad cloaks
That hang like bell tents from their stooping shoulders,
Cross a long white bridge with cautious footsteps,

They are following old footprints into open country
With barely a tree or boulder to offer them cover
If the wind should turn around to whip their faces.

Balanced between the limits of life and eternity
These travellers follow the ghost of a narrow road.
Snow blind and frozen they stumble along the way,

And because I cannot know, or seek out their destinations,
They remain enigmas trapped inside a time frame,
I can only guess at who they really were:

Exhausted merchants trudging through the snowfields,
Stubbornly pushing against the weight of winter
To reach the end of just another journey;
Or local farmers
Searching for the first inklings of spring?

                            *

This print by Hokusai has no known title.
Perhaps it is a riddle without an answer.
Perhaps it is a gateway to Satori.

I must trust each line he cut into the woodblock,
His eyes were clear as the sleepless Bodhidharma`s,
And he carved with care the truth as he perceived it.

His eyes were as clear as the eyes of the old Zen Master.
His pictures are mirrors made without a flaw.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 4th. - 31st. - November 30th. - December 1st.- 3rd. 2019.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Old Style Letters - New Version. (Completed poem)....

Trevor J Potter's Art: Old Style Letters - New Version. (Completed poem)....: It is like the old times. I sit writing letters to you, Pen on paper. No hurried text messages in a private code. Texts that can be wip...

Old Style Letters - (A poem in two parts).

                 1

It is like the old times.
I sit writing letters to you,
Pen on paper.
No hurried text messages in a private code.
Texts that can be wiped out in a moment,
Never to be stored in a perfumed bundle
Tied with a silk ribbon.

It is like the old times.
We are both avowedly old fashioned,
Preferring hard backs to videos,
Oil paints to photos;
Crops we have grown to packaged vegetables
Picked off a shelf in a supermarket.
We would live in a Vardo if we could do so,
But camping by the roadside is no longer viable.

It is like the old times.
I scrawl long letters to you
Believing you will keep them
Underneath your pillow.
(I keep yours in a jewellery box by the bedroom window).
We have found an integrity in outmoded ways,
A no nonsense strength that binds us together.

It is like the old times.
We have thrown away the new tat
And made the past our future;
We should learn at once the art of calligraphy
So that even our household notes are beautiful.

                 2.

There is a homeliness in simple things,
(My pinewood desk - the ticking clock -
The flow of ink on paper).
Such simple things are made to last,
To be of use - and not to fail.               

Yet we all must fail, retreat and fall,
That is the shadow on human nature;
But when our ashes are crushed and mixed,
Then scattered on the quiet water,
With luck these letters will remain
To tell our little story.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 24th. - 25th. - November 14th. - 22nd. - 23rd. - 25th. - 28th. 2019.
Note. It has been very difficult to find the structure of this poem, but now that I have split the poem into two parts it has gained a strength that it had previously lacked.