A Girl with a Flute. (Completed Poem).

Her candid face, half in sunlight, half in shade, 

Looks out from the canvas, silent but questioning,

Pleading for an answer that I cannot give,

Except, perhaps, in a tumult of dreaming

Where time implodes and the truth has no rules.

I peer deep and long into her dark young eyes

As though she were present, here and now in this 

                                                                  room,

And not just a portrait conserved behind glass,

A remarkable example of homely Dutch art. -

Vermeer aficionados eye her shyly as they pass,

They tip toe about the gallery as though around

                                                               a shrine,

Candle lit in a shadowy Norman church.

I lack their moderation. I would dearly love to ask

This unnamed girl to step down through the frame

And play her flute for me. To laugh and sing.

But then I may not have the nerve to ask.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

February 27th. - 28th.2021. March 8th. 2021.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Miracle of Rainbows. (Completed)

Trevor J Potter's Art: 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 abo...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Rainbows and a Nightingale. (Completed).

Trevor J Potter's Art: 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 20...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Street Scene, 9th. Lunar Month 1856.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Street Scene, 9th. Lunar Month 1856.: Studying a print by Utagawa Hiroshige I fall asleep in my rocking chair And find myself quietly strolling through The back streets of Ed...

Not One Word Can Explain Who We Are.

At 14.14 today the temperature was 14,

But if you had been with me in this room

The temperature could have reached 34,

The windows opened wide, the electric fan

Whirring - far too loud - up on the shelf. -

Fate, in the form of a wild child from Gweedore,

Tartan skirt hitched high above grazed knees.

Shirt open to the navel. Dark hair unfurling down

Almost to the floor. That was the moment we

Stopped running in blind circles. Our hearts embraced,

Became one aching heart, transmuted into love,

An alchemy that fused deep joy with pain. -

What we dare say or write about that moment

Is merely sound. There are no words to spell out

                                                          all we know.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

February 20th. 2021.

For Ivy.

Trevor Through the Looking Glass. (Rewritten Poem).

Levitation was never a part of my lifestyle,

but this morning, without due effort,

                           without an act of will,

I found myself up on the mantlepiece

floating, just like Alice, through the mirror,

parting the malleable glass with my fingers

as though it were a fog

                                   or a skein of silk,

falling apart as I touched it.

"Where have you been?" My puzzled friends chivied.

We were sauntering down Carnaby Street

on a cold mid winter evening,

strolling through crowds of fashionable London girls.

"To the future," I replied.

"I have visited the 21st. Century

where today is just a legend,

The Beatles analogue history,

and this street a commercial byway

packed with histrionic tourists,

                                           and deserted by The Scene."

They looked at me and scoffed,

                                   "Trevor is always full of stories,"

and so we entered the smoke filled pub

heaving with mods and would be actors.

Weekend models looking for an agent.

                       Con artists by the score.

The chatter degraded into white noise.

Smoke thickened, becoming an opaque glass

through which I drifted blindly, unable to stop the clock.

"The Nineteen Sixties were fine," I whispered to myself.

"Back then we were imaginative and hopeful,

scheming a low tech revolution, a brand new Peacenik age.

A time to love and share, to reaffirm The Levelers, their 

                                                                 self sufficiency.

A time to magic war zones into gardens;

to plant white poppies down the throats of guns.

I stared far into the mirror,

took note of the flaws, the scratches, the film of grubby motes,

the smudges from my fingers.

"Who is that old man looking back at me?

He looks so tired and wistful. Does he have a tale to tell?

Or is this just the trick of a lonesome mind?"

For a second the image was young and wild once more.

It giggled - then puffed a cloud of smoke in my face.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

March 2rd. - 5th. - Aug 25th. 2016. - February 16th. - 17th. 2021.

For all those friends I can no longer meet.

Naruto Whirlpool. (Revised)

This is a great place for ship wrecks.

The basalt rocks - gnarled broken teeth

Snap at the salty spume with a sharks

                                                ferocity,

Yet catch on nothing airborne, nothing

                                                 fleeting,

Never deflecting the flight, the darting 

                                            cavalcades

Of soaring - diving gulls,

Those living knives slicing through the

                                                   waves..

But slow sailing ships are always easy prey,

Especially the overladen western galleons

Trading guns for silk - gold for porcelain;

And, according to the records, opioids.

These rocks are the islands secret weaponry,

Lurking pods of static submarines,

Waves clawing at their towers, whipping up

                                         whirlpools

Between the anchored keels.

Meanwhile, in his snow white inland castle,

The Shogun writes a poem about plum blossom,

Delicate as a torn wing - ephemeral as the spray.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

14th. - 18th. February 2021.

Hiroshige Prints, poem Number Three. The month of March.

Thinking back to my poem for November 2019, poetry is what the fisherman sees below the surface of the sea, what we call reality is what happens above the surface.