A Miracle of Rainbows. (Completed)

A Miracle of Rainbows, Part 2 of Rainbows and a Nightingale.


That day I thought the sky was full of angels,
Two double rainbows high above the gardens
After a week of chill midsummer rain,
June 20th. 1967,
The sky a pale blue lake refracting light
                          As though it were a giant lens,
A vast clear canopy of polished crystal
Sprinkled with ten billion drops of rain.

Caught up, mind dazzled, in these transformations
I stood transfixed upon the garden pathway
Not daring to move, in case the magic should vanish
If I happened to spend a minute or two in the house.
Eventually dusk erased these rainbow arches,

With the encroaching shadows of a starless night.

Electric lights flicked on in dusty rooms
Crammed tight inside the grey Victorian terraces
That in a year or two would be knocked down
To make way for an M1 intersection.
I entered my intimate space of books and vinyl
And tried to make anew those faded rainbows
With oil pastel on a cardboard lid.
I soon gave up and tore the lid to shreds.
My rudimentary smudges made me cry.

Outside in the yard our spaniel chased his tail.

His take on life was always down and dirty.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
3rd. - 5th. - 7th. July - October 4th. 2020.
22nd February 2021

Rainbows and a Nightingale. (Completed).

      Rainbows and a Nightingale.  Part One. (Summer 1967 Recalled).

Although it is just passed midsummer,
Wednesday the 1st. of July 2020,
The evening sky is moist, pale, autumnal,
As though the sun has succumbed to Coronavirus,
Cloud swaddled, moon white, barely functioning,
The sick star of a temporary universe.

The rain grieved air now turns my garden greyish
As though the earth, the plants, the stony pathways
Were always meant to be as drab as concrete,
Urban concrete cracked by spores and cancer. -
Home grown Loganberries, scrumptious, good to eat,
All seem to have been freaked with specks of grey,
Not one ripe fruit as healthy as it should be.

Well, tomorrow, I`m told, will be a washed out day
With lightning flashes, clouds turning noon to night,
And the birds dumb, hunched cold on dripping branches,
Trees swaying and splintering in the gusts and squalls. -
Outside, in the street, a nightingale mocks this greyness,
And I am minded of a sudden dazzle of rainbows,

An evening of double rainbows, almost a lifetime ago.  

Trevor John  Karsavin Potter.
July 1st. -  2nd. - 3rd. - 4th. - October 4th. 2020.

February 22nd 2021.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dark January Morning. (Newly Completed Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dark January Morning. (Newly Completed Poem).: Filigree skeins of music drift through air Floating gently from the hi-fi speakers Of my kitchen radio. I sit in the narrow corner of my...

I Tried to Tell.

I tried to tell - family and friends
Who I really am,
But the ink had faded off the page
Before I wrote a word.

Touch me - yes - I have not gone away,
But I wish you could reach my mind.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 29th. 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Poem and a Song. (1) Sunburn. (2)Hyper Transitions

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Poem and a Song. (1) Sunburn. (2)Hyper Transitions:                     1 .              Sunburn. ( A Poem ). Uncovered in the sun The record of my ancient Greek ancestry Is etched upon...

A Poem and a Song. (1) Sunburn. (2)Hyper Transitions

                   1.

             Sunburn. (A Poem).


Uncovered in the sun
The record of my ancient Greek ancestry
Is etched upon my skin
By the ultra violet rays.

I am proud of this darkness,
This darkness now revealed
By the savage July heatwave
That has come a month too soon.

I did not expect such heat in verdant June
When the grass is not yet yellow
And the loganberries are coming into ripeness
Deep within the shadows of new growth.

This new growth is a sign of next years harvest,
A small link to an unimagined future
I really do not want to think about,
I prefer the comfort zone of ancient history.

The colours in my skin are my history,
Neither Slav nor dark Azeri,
But a honey mixture somewhere in - between.
The colour of my skin is who I am,

Greek and Russian - Celt and Roma Gypsy,
The people of the Central Asian steppes.
All their folk tales are chapters in my story,
From the western seas to the domes of Isfahan.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 25th. 2020.

                   2.
 
    Hyper Transitions. (A Song)


Between birth and ten
All my friends were girls
I wanted to be like them
But that would mean surgery

Between ten and twenty
All my friends were men
I wanted to be like them
So out went surgery

Now I am seventy
I want to be both
A man and a woman
Elder and Younger
Buddhist and Catholic
African and Eastern
Celtic and Saxon
Settled and Gypsy

These are dreams in the soul
And the soul is transcendent
Transparent and bountiful
The conduit of love
Of wisdom and laughter
The ferocity of truth

The soul is the wound in the heart and the bone
That cannot be excised by hate or by surgery


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
June 25th. 2020. 

The Longest Day.

Even the longest day must end eventually,
Become a faded postcard stored in a cupboard,
A postcard fainter than my thumb print
Smudged upon a dirty window pane.

The longest day, important to me now,
Will lose the gloss and colour, fierce intensity
Of mid summer glory, this sensuous moment,
To become much less incisive than a dream.

Those things I find so special on this day,
The two new roses budding on the dead stick
That I thrust, with not much hope, into the ground,
A year or more ago, will soon be history -

Faint shadows of a summer garden where
I can no longer dig or rake or hoe.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 21st. - 23rd. 2020.