The Story of Two Gardens, Revised. .(A Poem and Two Pictures).

With great care the roses have been pruned and tended

By many careful hands, green fingers

Inherited from centuries of farmers, Wessex folk and Irish,

Who tilled the green spaces between the Druid woods.

Over the ruined fence the wilderness grows tall,

Beautiful but deadly, evolving with the help of human malice,

That strange desire to destroy the fine work of neighbours

Because it is good - Because it pleases strangers.

I wish I could build a wall high as my house

To keep out fox and bracken, rat and mouse.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

August 4th. - 6th.2024.

Oxford Ghosts.

Criss - Crossing The Meadow.(Revised)

Yesterday I went back home

To the land of the White Rabbit,

The Griffin, and the Sheep who both

Rows and knits, parting the autumn reeds

With a Baa and a knowing look.

Her sculling skills were famed,

Along with her Banbury Tarts and

Fresh grass sandwiches, but please

Never mention braised mutton chops,

And certainly not rabbit pie. Yes

Yesterday I went back home

To the sites and gravitas of my early childhood,

Christchurch Meadow that I crossed twice a week

                                                           in the mist,

The heads of the slow moving cattle

Floating above grey stillness,

Their horns Viking bright in the dawn.

Yesterday the cattle were gone,

Replaced by marauding tourists

Queuing in droves to tramp through the quad

And the shop where the Sheep once knitted. 

But I was still at home despite that throng.

A girl was rowing on the river -

A lizard sat soot black on a roof - and

I heard the melancholy tick of a watch, and saw a

                                                Butterfly take wing.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

July 28th.- 29th. 2024.

 

  

Happy House.

 

2010 - 2024 Recalled.

 

2 Pastels.

 

Just So.