Shrove Tuesday, February 2020. (Re Written)

The cherry blossoms are already out in Tokyo.
Here in London I have daffodils and crocuses,
The swift shadows of inland gulls in flight,
Darting across my driveway;
The uproar of children echoing through the school yard
As they rabble rouse home - kicking - laughing.
If this is winter then spring is just a rumour.

I love all nature, but often shut the window
On all that happens outside my run down semi.
I turn on the radio to feed my addiction to news bites.
Even if politics makes me as poor as a dormouse,
Curtails my civil rights, traps me in one country,
Steals my I D, shreds my pension with taxes,
I have found a kind of solace in everyday things.
Yes I love all nature however tiny or cosmic;
The clouds of bright stars shimmering over the rooftops;
The elemental crying of urban foxes;
The unlikely regeneration of half dead rose trees
That in summer host a crowd of butterflies.
The world is a kaleidoscope of delicate miracles,
My neighbourhood and garden are no exception.

It is half a century since I was in Kyoto,
Strolling beneath the blossoming plums and cherries,
My eyes dazzled by the dance of micro colours,
The returning power of the sun. -
While there I was taught that song birds, flowers, foxes,
Are my intimate friends on this our magical planet,
Friends to be cherished with love and true compassion.

I watch the infants skedaddle out of the school yard,
So like young monkeys escaping out of the pen.
I hope that politicians will not blight their new lives
With post code stereotyping and retro - nationalism;
Our world is too precious to be carved up into fiefdoms,
Grim technocratic islands of corporate - feudalism. -
I turn off the radio. I wish to hear myself think;
To sit by my opened window before the sun sets. -
Close to my garden walls a hyacinth is blooming.
The cherry blossoms are already out in Tokyo.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 22nd. - 23rd. - 26th. - 27th. 2020.
I want to try and put the whole of life into my poems. I have tried to put magic, politics, human relations with the planet into this poem. My love of the Tao and Zen are also in here somewhere.

Beyond Words, Beyond Saying.

One intimate listening
One intimate seeing

Yin and Yang balanced
In perfect harmony

You touch my hand in the darkened room
The hour and day have no other meaning


While I am with you
I cease to be I

While you are with me
You are all that I know

We become one person
Two bodies one mind

One intimate listening
One intimate seeing

One sea of feeling
In the ocean of time


While I am with you
I cease to be I

While you are with me
Crowds become shadows

We do not need words
Language is selfish

We have laughter and smiles
The sharing of dreams


You kiss my face in the perfect dark
I kiss your lips  - We are lost in each other

We become one person
Two bodies one mind

One intimate listening
One intimate seeing

Yin and Yang balanced
In perfect harmony


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
18th. - 19th. - 20th. February 2020.

The Myth of Life and Love Returning.

Last month I watched you walk across the still water
In the dark cavern
Underneath the concrete city.

You could have been a Sufi Saint,
Gliding out of this dimension
With consummate ease into another.
A rich mosaic of lights and laughter
Greeted you as a long lost soul.

Now I sit and wait on the opposite shore
Watching the shadows deepen the silence
With the ghostly chill of ancient visions,
The visions you talked of in your sleep,
Your troubled head pressed close to mine.

I sit and tremble in the lonely dark.
Sit and wait for your safe return.
Perhaps you will bring the light of new life
Across the vast and sacred lake.

The light that opened the flowers of Eden
In the clear dawn of the first Spring day,
When all the creatures lived at peace,
Fed from the hands of Eve and Adam.

And then, my love, we could plant anew,
Plant anew, without fear of destruction,
The sacred grove that once flourished here
Before this world was buried alive,
Buried beneath the concrete city.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 16th. - 17th. 2020.
Developed from a very different poem
written March 30th. 2015. - May 12th. 2017.
The image of the under city lake based on The Rose Playhouse site in Southwark.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Wistfulness. (New Longer Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Wistfulness. (New Longer Version).: Cleaning my Rock n Roll bullied ears With the sweet tones of lute and recorder I slowly become aware Of all the delicate sounds that thr...

Wistfulness. (New Longer Version).

Cleaning my Rock n Roll bullied ears
With the sweet tones of lute and recorder
I slowly become aware
Of all the delicate sounds that thrive in the
                                         world around me
Every minute of the day,
Every moment of the year.

And when I dream of all my many friends
Who died decades before their time,
I feel their presence in the wind,
I hear their voices in the rain.

But Rock n Roll music wrecks my ears,
Makes me forget who I am,
A lonely wanderer through wintry fields
Searching for ancient memories.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
10th. - 11th.February 2020.
For Pauline, Sharon, Shelah, Zoe, Rufus, John, George, Peter, Elisabeth, Priscilla, and both Christines.

Grey February Morning. (Companion Poem to Early February Daffodils).

There are no birds, no insects, in this painting,
Just plum blossoms feathering silver grey boughs
Viewed against a blank paper sky.

Meanwhile the daffodils in my miniature garden
Point yellow spear tips at the crumbling wall
With the fierce intolerance of the very young.

When they are fully grown into bright trumpet stars
Their silent music will dance awake the sun
Now snug beneath a thick duvet of cloud,

Low lying cloud the colour of old paper
On which the Chinese Master sketched plum blossom,
But no moths, no arachnids, no soaring birds.

I have little love for this ancient fading picture.
I prefer the insolent spears of my daffodils.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
9th. February 2020.
Part inspired by the illustration for February on my Chinese Calendar.

Seventeen 2020.(Illustrated Poem).

I notice you are now in high heels.
Tall as a flamingo. Frightening the boys.
You zap their self confidence with a laugh.

When I was young I dressed in Winkle Pickers,
Your tongue is sharp about that.

Rimbaud and Amy Winehouse your sacred martyrs;
Keats and Paula Rego on your mind.
I meet you in the bar by the canal side,
The scent of skunk itching through your hair,
Your eyelids bluer than your pale blue eyes.

You are the future glimpsed one boozy lunchtime;
(The One Tun Googe Street nineteen sixty five.
Thorny Price, the gypsy girl, laughing at my elbow,

Spelling out my Good Luck, several decades hence).
You chide me for my 1960`s memoirs,
But praise me for my anti Brexit stance.
My past is just a reference book lobbed into the archives,
It is who I am today that interests you.

So welcome to the fray my wild godchild,
The rebels are the sane folk, don`t you know.
Bedlam has made a home in Downing Street.
Camden is reality. I greet you with a kiss.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
2nd. - 5th. - 6th. - 7th. February 2020.

12th. December 2020. - 4th. May 2021.

For Ivy, the granddaughter of Thorny Price.