Trevor J Potter's Art: The Raw Coffee Bean.(Revised Ending)

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Raw Coffee Bean.(Revised Ending): Last night I chewed on a coffee bean, Crunching it between my front teeth Until the flavours oozed out                                  ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Lotus Blooms - Three Poems. One Hundred Famo...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Lotus Blooms - Three Poems. One Hundred Famo...:                            1. Fan shaped wing spread wide, A heron with her neck arched back Dives towards the blue wave.                   ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. Minowa, Kanasugi at Mikawashima, from O...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. Minowa, Kanasugi at Mikawashima, from O...:                            1, Fan shaped wing spread wide, A heron with her neck arched back Dives towards the blue wave.                   ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Guernica Tapestry. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Guernica Tapestry. (Revised).: Bulls run amok through the lanes  Destroying shop fronts, door frames, fences In a cascade of implacable terror. Lights flash on and off in ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Betrayals and Redemption. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Betrayals and Redemption. (Revised).: Infidelity creates poetry,                but don`t try it. Love that is certain overcomes pain and treachery But innocence is kinder, les...

Guernica Tapestry. (Completed).

Bulls run amok through the lanes 

Destroying shop fronts, door frames, fences

In a cascade of implacable terror.

Lights flash on and off in all the houses

Until the rooftops shear off in flames.

Opened hands imploring skywards,

Stretch high as if to catch the bombs

That drench the town in molten tears.

A felled horse screams, her backbone severed.

A woman clasps a dying infant,

Her wild eyes fixed on yesterday,

Tomorrow cancelled, the clocks all melted,

Time dissolved as morning implodes.

Invincible in their sleek new bombers,

Airmen usurp the irascible gods

Who once ruled Europe in thunder and earthquake.

Even the chariot that carried the sun

Has spiraled to earth, impelled by their powers.

The deified airmen soar like Condors

On wings that glitter in the morning light.

The woman cradling the dying infant

Half blind watches the aircraft depart.

It made no sense that such elegant aircraft

Were manufactured simply to slaughter;

She had dreamt such beauty could only be good,

But now it was real it had killed her world.

She sees the hurt horse writhing and kicking.

She lets out a cry that echoes and echoes.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

August 4th. - 6th. - 16th. 2021.

I saw the tapestry version of Guernica in the Whitechapel Art Gallery when it was shown there in April 2010. The images terrified me. The aircraft are not represented in the picture but the people on the ground during the attack could see them clearly because thet were flying quite low. In some ways rocket attacks are more terrifying due to the very short warnings that the people in the target areas get. But what a terrible waste of engineering skills these rockets are!

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.