Simple Gifts.

Twilight lasts an hour in mid November,

Too dark to read - too light to use a lamp -

The windows burnished bronze turning gold.

School kids love this time of year - it seems,

Kicking up clouds of leaves with dancing feet -

Gold dust smeared with mud on rubber boots.

Not many people are wearing masks today.

We are all so happy we want to show our faces

To smiling strangers - to neighbours we rarely

                                                               talk to -

The weather so mild we do not need our coats.

Perhaps it is the soft breeze - perhaps the vote

                                      in distant Philadelphia

That has filled this London street with happy faces -

Or perhaps it simply is the pastel twilight

Revealing the secret beauty of a place I thought

                                                                I knew.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

November 10th. 2020.

This is the third in a group of fourteen line poems about my responses to November 2020 in my local area.

Sounds of Summer.

Sounds of summer on the radio.

A lark ascends on violin wings

Above imagined tree tops,

The wind - a hum of violas.

Summer is a long time gone now,

The red leaves fallen to heaps of damp fire

Left smouldering on street corners.

Dogs sniff the wind blown debris - then move on.

I try to remember the faces of long gone friends.

The smoke from dying embers is clearer to me now

Than eyes once full of passion,

Smiles innocent and new.

One day in the park, however, retains true clarity -

Anne chatting and laughing - a lark almost out of view.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

November 8th. 2020.

Poem Two in sequence.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Listening to You Read. (Newly Completed poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Listening to You Read. (Newly Completed poem).:                Listening to You Read (In Memoriam Anne Sexton and John Lennon). Listening to you read I become American, A citizen of ...

A Passing Moment in November.

The sound of distant traffic - muffled by houses.

Two people walking in the street - masked -

                                    distanced by silence.

A single wren chirping in a wet - bare tree.

I stand in the open doorway - barefoot - watching

                                        the world pass by.

This spring I let the weeds grow high in my

                                                front garden -

I let them grow for the arachnids - the bees - the

                                    occasional butterfly.

People passing to and fro thought I had got old

                                              and negligent -

They threw their rubbish over my garden wall.

The weeds shrink back to earth as winter nears.

My neighbours will soon think my garden tidy.

I stand in the doorway - wondering what to do next.

This cold November I am learning how to be lonely.

I retire to the kitchen to light a stick of incense.

The fragrant smoke reminds me of long lost friends.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

November 5th. 2020.

 Poem One in sequence.

Our Apple Tree has been Replaced by Concrete.. (Renewal NW2).

They are building tower blocks

where we used to plant

vegetables for the family table.

Dragonflies vacate the tiny stream.

I have in mind to learn the Frisian language.

Family roots dig deeper than we realise,

they tap into the source of hidden memory

beneath the skin of who we think we are.

Concrete tower blocks, caves in space

where modern Hunter - Gatherers hunker down

after forays into asphalt jungles,

are merely metaphors for transience.

The bones of villages, of towns and cities,

rot beneath green fields in many places.

Farmers gathering rice - wheat - or barley,

chat in dialects of ancient lineage.

I have in mind to learn the Frisian language,

to staunch the wound between my past - my present. -

Today I watch developers trash the marshes

where we grew our spuds - our beans - our roses.

When a child I was not taught the names of flowers,

I told myself the dragonflies are birds.

If I can learn the words my forbears spoke

I may then touch the truth of who I am.

Our apple tree has been replaced by concrete.

Dragonflies vacate the tiny stream.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

18th. - 27th. - 28th. October 2020.  

Late October Wistfulness.

The paving stones are ochre and red.

The swaying trees are dripping tears

Through a floating skein of mist

That swabs my eyes with webs and phantoms.

In my mind I am still cocooned in summer

Awaiting the rustle of new spread wings

To lift me out of this season of torpor

Into a forest of tropical colour.

Tonight the time turns backwards, not forwards;

The shadows lengthen at 5 o`clock,

They are sick with dreams, a smokescreen of fables

That blot out reason with terrors and rumours.

Trees shed their leaves because daylight is fading,

They are not concerned with the bonfires we light.

Crumbs that I threw on the footpath this morning

Have all been eaten by the passing birds.

I lost my way when childhood departed,

The dead leaves falling thick and fast.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

24th. October 2020. - February 23rd 2022.

Words are worth a whole world more than money. (Revised)

This book cost me only 80 pence.

It cost Li Po a whole wild life to

                                            write,

Cheap wine staining every folded

                                             page,

The glimmer of moonlight also hinted

                                                  at.

It seems the rarest art, the finest poems

Are seldom worth the price of ink and

                                            paper,

Unless a tycoon buys the manuscripts

And locks them deep inside a concrete

                                             vault.

The fact the poet died while reaching for

                                      the moon,

Or heaving up inside a New York Bar,

Seems to magnify the monetary value

Of words rich in love - in hope - in

                                             grief.

It is the joy of ownership that makes the

                                   tycoon tick,

Not the beauty of the poems, the fine calligraphy,

         the deft strokes of the brush.

Li Po drowned a thousand years before I bought 

                                       this book.

Drunk - he tried to hug the moon reflected in the

                                        Yangtze.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

October 20th. - 21st. 2020.