Maiko Beach, Harima Province, October. (Completed Version).

Storms and earthquakes stretched the trees

Into shattered hands scratching at a sky

Wounded by the dying light

Of a cold October sun. I enter this picture

                                                       at dusk

Just like Alice drifting through the mirror,

Dissolving the skin thick glass of perception

With outstretched hands that reach out for

                                                     the prize

Of a more interesting world than the one we

                                                         live in.

A maze would be far easier to negotiate than

                                                   this forest,

I find that every path is blocked by gnarled

                                              trunks of trees

And their ancient interlaced branches.

The pale blue bay remains a hazy mirage,

Slowly darkening as the dusk comes on,

Four minutes earlier each October evening.

I planned that the distant boats should be my 

                                                          rescuers,

But now they must remain forever out of reach,

Two small sails heading to the far shore

Where the grass, of course, is greener.

I step back from the picture and rub my eyes.

Like Alice I have to come to terms with life

Now that the sun has set, and my world shrinks

                                                back to one room

In the narrow shell of a suburban semi detached.

But why can I now see people and their houses

In that painted wood, that I failed to see before?

Perhaps my terms of reference were too shallow.

Perhaps I only saw what I wanted to see.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

1st. - 2nd. October 2021.

Poem No. 10. Hiroshige print illustrating October in my 2021 Calendar.

Seashore at Hoda. (Revised).

 In the background

The pastel sea is calm

Speckled with white sailed boats.

In the foreground

Rough waves scourge the rocks

With turbulent whips of salt.

Two lone men walk the narrow path

Between the broken cliff face and the sea.

They are separated by a gulf in time

At least a century wide,

Unbridgeable to them,

But to me - visible in a single glance.

The cliff face towering high above their heads

Appears to have been gouged by giant claws,

Or the teeth of dragons fighting for their lives.

There is only the slightest breeze this evening,

Just enough to keep the boats in motion.

September paleness,

The sea a pastel blue

That I have only seen in films and fading dreams,

And the sky is split into three shelf like layers,

Indigo - Duck Egg Blue - a misty shade of Orange.

The darkest colour - a thick band at the top of the page.

The distant shoreline seems blurred and indistinct,

A smudge of green indicating hills

With perhaps a town or two.

And high above all, transparent in the orange light,

Mount Fuji stands, a god without a conscience,

An ice cold Buddha keeping all his secrets,

Sketched with three thin lines of printers ink.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

September 24th. 2021.

Poem No.9, Month of September, ref my calendar illustrated by Hiroshige prints. 

September Sunset. (Revised).

Autumn in the air. Although I refuse to take note

Of the slow decline of late summer sunlight

Into a watery softness,

                                     I have switched the heating on

                                                          from time to time

And packed my sunglasses away until next year.

I cannot yet face the sadness of falling leaves,

Rain drops on my dirty windows meandering like tears.

                                        I do not want summer to end

And so I try to imagine that the days are still as warm 

As in the last week of July.

Then the slow easing down into deep August.

Then the parks filled with children running wild,

Their mothers picnicking at a safe distance.

Dogs, scampering off their knotted leashes,

Chased by irate owners.

Yet already I am nostalgic for mid winter pastimes,

Tchaikovsky on the CD Player conjuring magic snow,

Books open on the kitchen table, the pages, stained and

                                                                           thumbed,

Bent back to mark some paragraphs of interest,

Whole sentences underlined with pen or pencil.

I rarely open books in spring or summer.

When the sun is high books are left on shelves,

Their ageing covers fading in the glare.

But September is here now, neither summer nor winter.

A picturesque interlude, a time of waiting, of watching

                                                                       the apples ripen.

(Smart children sneak into my neighbours garden

To clamber quietly up into the branches).

And so, having closed my books, I sit by the door and listen

To the quiet voices of strangers in the street

Strolling at ease, unhurried while the daylight lasts.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

September 12th. - 13th. - 14th. - 23rd.- 24th.  2021.

Primitive London, The Scene in the One Tun Goodge Street. (Revised).

Watching that old film was a mistake.

My pictured friends - blurred images

Animated to an analogue soundtrack.

My on screen presence - confined to a Scene

Long since revised for the history buffs.

Truth left rotting on the Cutting Room floor

To make more space for reductive legends,

Legends filtered through static and snowfall

That reconfigure a well known view.

Everything I knew turned upside down

To fake a sanitised story.

When I review mementoes of the nineteen sixties

I view them as shadows, the shadows of dead dreams

Darkening the gentrified inner city neighbourhoods

With stains of hidden histories.

When I wander through Soho, or Fitzroy Square,

I search for landmarks that are no longer there,

Airbrushed out of time,

Their relevance disregarded.

This was my home patch, my manor so to speak,

When I was a wannabe poet and actor

Trying to get laid, and sometimes writing songs.

I was twenty years old, I knew every backyard,

Every cul-de-sac, every alley and stair well.

I knew that fetid archway near Rathbone Place

Where junkies hunched close in clandestine huddles

In fear of the shadows of passing strangers.

I watched them slope off to derelict stables

Where they slept on floors in old sleeping bags.

I spent some afternoons in the Greek Cafe,

And that is where I first met my girlfriend.

She offered me an apple across the round table

As we sat sipping Turkish Coffee.

Watching that film was a bad mistake.

Some faces on screen are lifelike ghosts

That I can pin names to, but never meet.

Big John is dead, so too is Jailer Mick,

And also, I suppose, kids I can`t now name,

Scoffing at the camera to mock their audience,

And that right now - alas - is me.

And they were right to scoff, 

I can no longer lord it in that crowded Bar

Although my image stands out on the screen.

I am a passing stranger - an old face at the door.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

August 13th. - 14th. - September 8th. - 9th. 2021 - March 9th. 2022.

Limbo Land. (Corrected Version).

Cold for late August.

Although in full leaf

Trees appear starkly desolate

Against the grey sky.

Perhaps they will change into the barbed webs of winter

More quickly than we would expect.

Since that bad accident

It seems that you may need a carer

For much of your adult life.

A girl who suffers fierce seizures

Can rarely be left untended

For more than an hour or so.

The doors that were kept wide open for you

Slammed shut when your injuries were known.

I sit alone by the window

Watching the trees bend and twist in the wind

Like dancers with chains on their feet.

We two are shackled,

Kept far apart by the hidden fault

Deep in the folds of your brain.

After nearly two years in the hospital

Your home coming will be strictly monitored.

I sit alone by the window.

The oaks in the garden opposite

Have not been hacked by a tree surgeon

For maybe a decade or more.

I note how strong they have grown

In the years since they last were treated.

Indeed they have grown taller than the houses.

At dawn and sunset they fill with birdsong.

Cold for late August.

So like a mausoleum

This house echoes to my voice

As I talk to myself in my loneliness.

Perhaps this Fall the funds will be made ready

To make safe spaces for you to come home to.

Waiting is not a chore

Either of us do well.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

August 30th. - September 2nd. - 7th. 2021.

I like to write how people, self included, usually speak, not constructing a logical sequence of ideas, statements and images, but in a natural free flow. This poem is dedicated to Ivy who has been in hospital since early 2020 because of her epilepsy.

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