Three Lotus Blooms - Three Poems. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Minowa, Kanasugi at Mikawashima,

                           1.

Fan shaped wing spread wide,

A heron with her neck arched back

Dives towards the blue wave.

                           2.

Could life be this simple again?

A distant village of paper houses

Sleeps by the waters edge.

No gas, no electricity, no speeding cars

Burning up the tarmac in the evening light.

No radios blaring jazz from upstairs

                                                     windows.

No American English spoken.

Could life be so calm - so quiet again?

The only sounds the evening songs of birds

Intermingled with occasional conversations

As people meet to watch the stars come out.

Half lost in shadow, a solitary man is strolling

Close to the shore, keeping his thoughts to

                                                      himself.

A wading heron calls out in sudden alarm.

                           3.

The hunting heron dives from a red sky.

A single blurred cloud of early autumn

Shadows the warm waters.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

1st. - 17th. -19th. August 2021.

Poem No. 8, Month of August, from illustrations on my 2021 Calendar by Hiroshige.

I have been studying this print every day throughout August and every day I find some new detail. So I now have three interconnected poems not just the single Haiku type poem that I began with on the first of the month. The Three Lotus Blooms refer to three meditations. 

View of Kajikoyama, Inaba Province.

A poem is a painting in embryo.

I sketch black or grey lines on white paper

As witness to scenarios in my head,

A quilted landscape of interweaved colours

That would dazzle any sleepers, old or infant,

Trying to get some sorely needed rest.

No paintbox can provide paints bright enough

When a clear account needs to be provided

Of scenes drifting by my inner eye,

Or what I witness when I`m wide awake

And staring glum out of the back room window

At rain zipping through the July gardens,

Tearing blooms to shreds.

So I must revert to words scratched on cheap paper

To try and get my thoughts into your head

Because my paint brush cannot work the trick

To show you what I mean.

I thought at first the picture on my calendar

Lacked clear focus, lacked any depth or truth,

Yet this print by Hiroshige is so dream like

It seems to me he mastered a technique

To paint with inks the world transgressed by visions

To make it magical.

For some reason trees are flowering in July,

Maytime translated to the height of summer.

The turquoise bay, ice still, no white waves curling,

Recalls a mirror reflecting only sky.

The islands are stone ships that travel nowhere.

The pink and yellow houses look like boxes

Stacked in line below the opulent hill,

And not a single person walks the green land.

If I could paint one scene like Hiroshige,

Emulate his timelessness and space,

I would burn every word that I have written

On my backyard bonfire of the vanities

And set to making prints.

My thoughts would then connect straight with your thoughts,

Drifted to you on a raft of colours.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

31st. July 2021.

Poem No. 7 month of July, Hiroshige series of illustrations on my 2021 calendar.

By the Local Post Box. (Revised).

Meeting an ex pupil of mine after nearly 26 years, 

Then a child struggling with Album fur die Jugend,

Now a young woman, coolly walking her dachshund,

Schumann off her mind, husband at home fixing something,

But still the same voice,

Still the same awkward mannerisms,

Still the same keeping her distance

As though, once being her teacher, my pedestal remained

                                                                            unbroken,

A marble plinth too high for her to climb.

But still the questioning eyes,

Still the openness that was not really open,

Still the same quiet respect, the almost filial love

That left me strangely scared, exposed to ridicule

Because I feared I knew less than she thought, and that others

                                                              should have taught her.

She mentioned she has a daughter

Who cant keep away from the keyboard.

I had to admit I can no longer teach piano,

My fingers have lost dexterity, I can no longer stretch them wide.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

July 24th. - 28th. 2021. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: From My Bedroom Window. (Revised Last Stanza.).

Trevor J Potter's Art: From My Bedroom Window. (Revised Last Stanza.).: A girl in a white shift hurries down the hill. An urban fox scurries in the opposite direction. A chill electric moon, blue becoming yellow,...

Trevor J Potter's Art: As We Appear. (A Lyric).

Trevor J Potter's Art: As We Appear. (A Lyric).: I had never thought this before Not before you said it That I am a part of the landscape Just like the squat church tower The trees in the C...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Flowers on the Bare Hill. (Extended Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Flowers on the Bare Hill. (Extended Version).: Jesus crucified amidst a symphony of flowers. A song of sudden colours, of windblown music. The birds silent as the sky turns sombre, Imperi...

Flowers on the Bare Hill. (Completed Poem).

Jesus crucified amidst a symphony of flowers.

A song of sudden colours, of windblown music.

The birds silent as the sky turns sombre,

Imperial purple blinding the sun.

And yet strangely luminous the deepest of

                                                               shadows,

Midnight interwoven with noon.

Clematis and buttercups.

Apple blossom and winged seeds.

Asters and daffodils.

Tulips and Chrysanthemums.

Flowers from every season, from every continent

                                                               blooming

On the skull white rocks of this desert hillside

Used for day to day executions.

This was the bleakest spot near the city.

This was the silent place of sorrows.

Briar roses encircle the cross

With a hedge that reaches the crown of thorns.

Lambs entangled in the stems and branches

Bleat soft prayers that few can hear.

Even Jesus seems deaf on the cross,

And yet he calms them with his tears.

Mary rescues the smallest of the lambs

And holds him as though he were her child.

Saint John feeds the lamb from his satchel of bread.

Three days later the storm had passed.

Three days later the crowds had dispersed.

Love moved the stone, unsealed the tomb,

Golgotha changed into a sea of flowers.

Even the cross took root and flourished,

Became an oak tree rich in leaf.

Then all the birds in all the gardens

Of Jerusalem broke into song.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

July 18th. - 19th. - 20th. - 21st. 2021.

Based on a semi abstract picture of Christ crucified in a garden of large flowers that I painted a year or two ago.