Pauline Remembered. (Revised).

I will show you the photographs

But they can only give you a false impression.

Pre-digital cameras were not able to reveal

The delicate patterns flicked over her flawless skin

When winter sunlight filtered through high windows

And woke us from deep sleep.

The small hints of a mood change in her thoughtful eyes

Could perhaps be replicated by an artist

On canvas or on paper,

But the cameras that we used in the nineteen sixties

Were far too clumsy, the shutters far too slow

To register such delicate shifts in mood,

The sudden laughter and smiles - followed by a kiss.

Therefore these photographs can only hint at

The love that was so private, so much of who we were

In those two short years that we spent together -

Before she died of cancer - aged just twenty eight.

But I still recall the tenderness of her fingers

Stroking my face and fidgeting my hair

When I bent forward to kiss her on the shoulder

With that shy tenderness only young folk show.

And sometimes I can almost touch her in the dark

As though she were alive in the room beside me

In the quiet moments before I fall asleep. -

That is only wishful thinking, I try to tell myself,

But sometimes her voice seems closer than my heartbeats.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

February 21st. - 22nd. 2019. - October 19th. 2021.

Although we knew each other for nine years, it was only during the last two or three years of her life that we drew close together.

Recalling Two Artists, Pauline and Sharon.

Broken shards of porcelain litter 

The back lots of my life.

Two loves I thought would last a lifetime

Lost to ruthless history.

Two flawless porcelain figurines

Smashed in the yard at the furnace door.

Even the photographs I am left with

Fading on the kitchen wall.

Memories disintegrate into shadow,

Become unreal, detached from life,

Become like scattered porcelain shards

Too wrecked to be fixed back together.

And friends who die, have died forever,

We cannot recall them - with love - with tears.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

14th. October 2021.

Trevor J Potter's Art: My Home Is Europe. (ReWritten Poem)

Trevor J Potter's Art: My Home Is Europe. (ReWritten Poem): Once upon a time I had a dream.  I dreamed Europe was a single country,  No borders to cross,  No passports needed,  Every European an equal...

Trevor J Potter's Art: My Home Is Europe. (New Poem)

Trevor J Potter's Art: My Home Is Europe. (New Poem): Once upon a time I had a dream.  I dreamed Europe was a single country,  No borders to cross,  No passports needed,  Every European an equal...

It Takes Two to Dream.- A Lyric.

I dreamt of you all night

But we have never met

Only spoken on the telephone.

I dreamt of you all night.

Perhaps we could be partners

If we meet - Or useful friends -

Or simply wave across a busy street.

I dreamt of you all night.

Is that your face

Outside my bedroom window

Or just a trick of the morning light?

Would I recognise you if we meet?

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

October 5th. 2021.

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.