Trevor J Potter's Art: The Beauty of November Rain. (Completed)

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Beauty of November Rain. (Completed): I am glad rain is falling this November lunchtime. This is the time of year for the beauty of rain To become apparent, soaking the fallen le...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Memories by Lamplight, Grey mid November. (Rewritt...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Memories by Lamplight, Grey mid November. (Rewritt...: Turning lights on mid afternoon - my thoughts                                                              return to Anne, (1928 - 1974), te...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Pink Umbrellas in November. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Pink Umbrellas in November. (Revised).: Mums carrying pink umbrellas in the rain, Maytime umbrellas in squalid mid November When all is grey and dark and dripping wet, Mist liquid ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Listening to You Read. (Revised).

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

Trevor J Potter's Art: London is a Forest, Stop and Look.(A Sort of Fairy...

Trevor J Potter's Art: London is a Forest, Stop and Look.(A Sort of Fairy...: We have not left the wild woods, we islanders. London is a forest full of urban foxes pitter - pattering between the houses late at night. A...

London is a Forest, Stop and Look.(A Sort of Fairy Tale).

We have not left the wild woods,

we islanders.

London is a forest full of urban foxes

pitter - pattering between the houses

late at night.

And trees are everywhere in this city,

Gentle gods granting shopping malls and

civic centres

permission to exist -

Permission to fill up the glades and copses

with hotels and condominiums - with flashy

                                                   multiplexes -

& sombre public schools.

But when, in one sad rush, like flocks of swallows,

Citizens load their cars with bags and boxes

packed with bits and bobs they think important -

passports in top pockets -

Euros in hot hands. -

(All jobs lost. - All contracts binned and burned.) -

Storms will tug at leaves - splinter ancient branches

                                        above convoys of vehicles

retreating from these streets of broken dreams.

Most people gone,

                           wild bracken and blackberries,

sturdy oaks, moss and weeping willows,

will soon break through the rows of red brick 

                                                             houses,

leaving just a darkening in the subsoil,

a shadow like that of a Roman Polis.

Then curious foxes - feral -  deadly - graceful,

will find a peace their forbears never knew,

And soaring high above the dying city

Skylarks view a jungle      without end.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

January 17th. - 18th. - 21st. - 22nd.- 23rd. 2021.

On the radio this morning the novelist Nadifa Mohamed remarked, "London is a forest", referencing the vast number of trees in the capitol. Within minutes I started to write this poem, living as I do, in a suburb rich in trees. I then recalled that the last time Britain broke radically with Europe at the fall of the Roman Empire, Londinium reverted to nature until King Alfred the Great, a true European, restored the city. The gamekeepers were living in the new woodlands because mankind always thinks it is in control of nature, which of course will never be true. Poetry must always have a sense of fun however serious the subject may be.             

Media Magic Blues.

Mozart on the radio.

The Abduction from the Seraglio.

"Too many notes?" - Perhaps?

I sit in a very different country,

A very different time zone -

A lamp - a chair - a worktop -

A pile of A4 paper. -

A computer too big for my kitchen table.

Too many hours to scuff my shoes and doodle?

Too many hours? - Perhaps?

This room must be my whole world until April;

No Sultan - no eunuch guard - no volatile soprano -

To share my space,

To keep me company.

Their voices coming at me from the radio

Sing of exotic dreams that are not mine.

Deep January 2021, the night wind bitter,

Almost as cold as eighteenth century Vienna,

The courts ice black, - the gutters dripping snow,

Dogs barking somewhere for some wintry reason. -

Mode a la Turka popular this season,

A singspiel, put on in a freezing theatre,

Tells of sultry nights where east meets west,

Of kisses dipped in cyanide - and honey.

Now I am old such stories make no sense,

My dreams are simpler - all private to myself. -

I dream of friends I knew when I was twenty,

But the threshold is not cleared, and so we

                                                    cannot meet. 

Mozart on the radio.

The Abduction from the Seraglio.

"Too many notes? - Perhaps - perhaps - perhaps.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

January 9th. - 10th. 2021.