Last Night I Became Aware of the Beauty of Wood. (Revised).

Last night I became aware of the beauty of wood,
A beauty I had been taught to disregard
By parents in love with modern things,
With glass and steel, with artefacts of plastic,
With Formica tops covering leaky boards.

Last night I fell in love with polished wood,
Pale or dark, teak or pine, soft, or hard to cut,
It does not matter which;
Even the rough edged finish of the rocking chair
Is a delight to look at, to talk about, to touch.

Last night I threw out cushions stuffed with foam,
Stripped the plastic cover off the table,
Tore the tarnished lino from the floor.
Suddenly the whole house seemed to glow with life,
The dance of light on raw, and polished, grains.

From now on the table, chairs, the Chinese sofa
Shall remain on view; these simple hand made objects
Loved for what they are,
Items that made an honest craftsman smile
When he put by his chisel, lathe and saw.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
29th. January  - 1st. March 2018. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: Parliament Hill Fields. (New Ending).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Parliament Hill Fields. (New Ending).: Those kids you wrote about had hardly noticed you. You were just a woman standing on a hill Notebook in hand, Perhaps a shopping list or...

My Grandmother`s Pictures.

The kettle had steamed up the kitchen window,
And I was reminded of the London fogs
Made magic by Monet, his old eyes laughing
At the dance of sunlight on flecks of anthracite
Shimmering through the cold still air.
He observed autumnal reds and yellows
Dissolving into mottled greyness,
A washed out greyness, so like those prints
Of Raphael`s tapestries owned by my grandmother.

The whole of my childhood compressed into filmic
Scenes that flashed on the screen of my mind
Like psychic visions, a split second clarity
Shining a spotlight deep into my past.
I recalled my grandmother dusting the teak frames
That embellished those prints, prints loved more than life
Because they kept her in touch with her childhood.

Her prayerbook, stored somewhere in my bookcase,
Is filled with Anglo Catholic markers
Given out free in the eighteen eighties
When she toed the line, minding the household rules.
Then she never played out with her friends on a Sunday
But stayed indoors by the coal fire reading
Christian almanacs, no novelettes allowed.
Yet, when I was a kid in the nineteen fifties,
Free wheeling my tricycle round her patio
Like a street theatre artiste out of control,
The radio had outmoded strict Sunday observance
And Christ was an artwork pressed behind glass.

This morning, when the kettle steamed up the window,
I had suddenly recalled the power that those prints
Had exerted over my pre-teen curiosity.
I was then accounted too childish and volatile
To wander the halls of the great V & A,
The Science Museum my Easter day out.-
Lost for words I stared for hours at the faded
Cartoon of the Miraculous Draft of Fishes,
And all the colours the years had washed out
Seemed to shimmer more brightly the longer I looked.

And ever since then I have lived each moment
Alert to the beauty obscured beneath shadow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 15th. - 16th. 2016 - September 17th. 2017.
Extended and re-written January 16th. - 22nd. 2018.  

 

Trevor J Potter's Art: Montaigne. A fantasy. (Completed Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Montaigne. A fantasy. (Completed Version).: Montaigne slept above the stars in thrall to his dreams wherever they took him on their swift nocturnal wings. "I am a man and no...

Looking in the Mirror. (New Ending)

I do not recognize the face in this photograph.
The person I was last summer is not the person I now am,
Or wish to be, this bright mid winter morning.
Threads of cloud drift high above the skylight.

Compared to this likeness snapped in August
My reflection in the mirror is slightly skewed,
Misshapen by flawed glass, by shards of sunlight filtered
Through frosted bathroom windows.
A fog of condensation streaks the walls.

Cruel winter and the air seems thick with dreams.
Each day when I blink back at ageing features
Through tired eyes, through smears of bathroom soap,
They seem a little different than I remember,
A little less substantial, a little less my own.

Maybe winter is a time for transformations
When we shed the skins of all our yesterdays,
Discard the ghosts that haunt our family albums,
The frauds that clog our phones.
We cut the links to who we used to be.

This reflection in the glass is just a mirage,
A mime artiste peering through his mask
With urgent eyes, but spying nothing true.
A  wistful smile curves his painted lips
Into a silent question.

I look up through the skylight at the clouds,
Tangled strands that quickly break apart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 16th. - February 11th. - 12th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: 3 Seasons 3 Poems.- Faded Snapshots of Kyoto - So...

Trevor J Potter's Art: 3 Seasons 3 Poems.- Faded Snapshots of Kyoto - So...:             1 Faded Snapshots of Kyoto.  Below us The city seethes in heat Here Within the temple garden Even the sound of water...

Trevor J Potter's Art: First Meeting.

Trevor J Potter's Art: First Meeting.: Stunned by the sweetness of your smile My so obsessive rushing to and fro Has instantly become irrelevant. We are standing still, apart,...