No Looking Back. (Postscript to my Japanese Calendar Sequence).

Farewell my Japanese Calendar.
Farewell my Hokusai prints.
For a year you have delighted me each morning
When I checked my appointments for the day.
You have taken my mind on a long and sinuous journey
Through fields and brooding mountains,
Beside lakes and mysterious rivers,
And across the echoing depths of dream filled seas.
For a year you have taught me a new way of seeing
That has transformed my perspective on the art of daily living.
For a year you have slowly taught me
The clear mindset of Zen.
But now I must put you away, among books in my bedroom library,
A mute but tangible memory of a strange and remarkable year.
And I must continue my day to day journey, each hour melding into
                                                                                                 another,
Until the pictures blur into strangeness,
And the future is simply a word.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
December 17th. 2019.

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)....

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