A Flower Meditation.(Revised).

The silence of this flower

Is its true beauty.

Just being in her presence

Is a perfect meditation.

I look and look and look

At the fragile, sun filled cup.

Hard graft did not create this,

Just a simple natural process.

No Chinese porcelain vase

Could ever be so flawless.

In her presence thoughts grow quiet,

Cease to be a wild distraction.

This tulip, filled with sunlight.

So calm and still, yet in transition.

I sit and look and listen,

At one with all I see.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

April 27th. 2021.

Written on my birthday.

The Last Journey.

 Like a ghost walking

He stepped carefully

Into the car that would speed him home

As though it were a boat rocking

Against the storm lashed quay.

For a moment he mistook the chauffeur

For the Ferryman

And turned away startled, but not afraid.

He looked back at the crowd of smiling nurses

Gathered on the steps to wish him well

And gave a nervous wave.

His quirky smile was delicately nuanced

To hide his grief at parting

From so many friendships made in three short weeks.

His life had been a continuum of partings,

But this time the hurt was visceral.

Somehow he knew this was the final journey,

That his heart was only strong enough for this

And would soon give way

And simply cease to beat.

Better to die at home in his old warm bed

Than cut off from his wife and family.

But the icy wind this wintry April morning

Made him cling to dreams he knew were ephemeral.

He dreamed of a different journey, in a fine tall ship,

To the archipelago where he was born.

There he could rest and watch the dolphins leap

The quiet waves lifting slow towards the shore.

And there Charon`s barge, crowded with lonely strangers,

Was just another small boat out to sea.

He nodded to the chauffeur awkwardly,

And without more ado was driven away.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

April 17th. - 18th. - 20th. 2021.

Celandines at Easter. (Completed).

 A carpet of Celandines.

Yellow snow sprinkling the green.

Even I am made happy by this.

After the drabness of winter

A sudden rush of colour.

My eyes hurt in the sun.

Celandines are the tear drops of Angels

Spilled on the ground on Good Friday.

This morning a ghost from last summer,

The frail dried husk of a flower,

Was blown into my porch.

I snatched it up from the concrete,

This emblem of hopes and anxieties

Recollected, but no longer real.

I spent much of last year in the garden,

Astonished by the glamour of blossoms,

Wild roses as large as my hand.

Yet these delicate miniature Celandines,

No bigger than April snow flakes,

Dazzle my eyes this morning.

Spring flowers have the frailness of children,

We love them but can easily hurt them

In a moment of thoughtlessness.

But the Hydrangea, from which this husk fell,

Is a brute of a midsummer plant

That spreads over the path to my door.

Every June it spreads out of control,

But the blooms are just wonderful.

Celandines are small and ephemeral.

Mid April they melt in the sun.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

March 28th. - 29th. - April 5th. - 12th. - 14th. 2021.

Blackthorn Snow.

                       Blackthorn Snow.

Blackthorn snow, sudden, but not inconsequential. 

Unexpected storms break the rhythm of the year,

Especially in March.

I walk across the white hills searching for a trace

Of your introspective smile

                                             - Of your bell like voice

 In the wind shaken trees - in cloud shadows 

                                                        skidding over

The moist springtime snow.

My footsteps are the only ones that mark this path.

All around me I see blankness.

It was at Easter I first met you.

Easter nineteen sixty four.

You walked into the cafe and offered me an apple

From your knitted bag,

                                     (Your bag of tricks I named it).

You were only fourteen, but seemed five years older.

I was barely twenty one, naive and full of talk.

We spent hours discussing Braque and Dostoevsky,

The existential dramas of Sarte.

That day was nearly sixty years ago now,

In a very different city, a different century, a different

                                                             millennium.

A time far more honest than today. Far more intellectual.

(Perhaps I am growing old, but hope now seems grotesque,

                            a clown with rotted teeth and matted hair.

We then had Kennedy, that tragic morning star).

Our friendship lasted almost forty six years,

But then you crumbled beneath the surgeons knife,

A blazing light too easily extinguished, too quickly

                                                            turned to ash.

I walk across the white hills calling out your name.

There will not now be an answer.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

March 25th. - 26th. - 27th. - 28th. 2021.

For Zoe Harris, gone ten years already

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Unexpected Gift. (New Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Unexpected Gift. (New Poem).: Until then we had lodged in small bedsits, Loners who steered clear of strangers; Who hated fairgrounds and parties; Dance halls and pu...

Crescent Moon in March. (New Version).

Whispering into the hollow shell of my viola

I remember the last time we spent together

And try to fill the empty hours with music.

The pain warped cadences of Beethoven`s

Final string quartet,

Crafted out of solitude and sickness,

Echo indistinctly from the record player

In an adjoining room.

I place my viola back inside its case,

My music seems a fraud compared to Beethoven`s.

Tonight we are in the company of angels,

Or so I dare imagine.

They fly between us on silent wings,

Conveying coded messages that we alone decipher

In the privacy of our dreams.

They seem to feel the full hurt of our separation

As we wait out the wistful evening hours.

Until I met you I did not believe in angels,

I thought that they were optical illusions

Observed by Coptic hermits

Fasting in remote and hostile places.

I thought these saints were driven mad by loneliness,

By mouldy bread or brackish drinking water,

But now I must self isolate, kept indoors by covid,

The hidden presence of our guardian angels

Seems as real as music.

Tonight the moon is an indistinct white crescent,

A desert moon marred by the English mists,

Febrile mists dissolving truth and clarity. -

The ambivalent final chords of the string quartet,

 Echo through the house - and then the silence.

I turn off the lights. I crave a clearer view

Of the westward drift of the shadow patterned moon

Above suburban rooftops.

I hope that you can also watch the moon,

From the enforced sanctuary of your hospital bed.

I retrieve my viola from its wooden case.

For the first time since the fall that nearly killed you

I can play the tune I wrote the day we met.

In the depths of my mind I hear you call my name.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

March 3rd. - May 12th. 2020. - March 20th. - 21st. 2021.

This is a complete of a poem that I found very hard to write at first. This, I think, is the finished version.

The simplicities and complexities of Beethoven`s final string quartet have remained in my mind while I have been trying to complete this poem. I wrote it for a lovely person I have been unable to meet for far too long. The viola represents my singing voice, silenced because of covid.

View of Mount Fuji from Koshigaya Province.

Mount Fuji dominates the quiet landscape,

A savage white god breaking through the sward

From the shadow lands,

The ring of molten stones

Buried deep beneath the fields and houses,

The plum trees bright with flowers.

Several times a day the pathway shudders

Beneath the sandalled feet of the travellers

Reminding them that all they see is frail, is transient,

Even the savage white god

Shimmering in the sun.

From time to time they stop by the waters edge

To watch a boat slowly drifting by,

The oarsman standing tall, alert as a watchful heron.

Far to the south, on the edge of the inland sea,

The Naruto whirlpools roar between two shores.

The oarsman will never sail his boat that far,

He has other things on his mind.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

March 17th. 2021.

Hiroshige Prints, Poem No.4. The month of April.