"Quintet: Poetry Suite"
Bridge
You
are with me.
Always.
Like
a strong beam of light,
the torch seen at night.
Always.
Like
a bridge across the stream,
the deep point of a dream.
All
Ways.
Deep. Wide. The Steep Divide.
Always,
I have been waiting for
You.
Both feet firmly planted
either side of the bridge;
both hands grasping tightly
along the razor ridge.
Chase Not the Moon
Chase not the moon
for it is a lunatic lover,
and like all lovers
it has a mercurial disposition...
Like a lover, it comes and goes,
sometimes here, sometimes not,
sometimes bright, sometimes dim...
A whole or a part,
like a lover, it divides,
gets smaller and then disappears
into the endless night...
But like a lover,
when it returns,
it brings back
the lasting light.
Constant Night
My love is like
a constant light
that shines across
the endless night.
My life is like
a trail traversed
that begins again
when once reversed.
But ever since we met,
you have been the rock;
I am the bobbing boat
always coming into dock.
The light, the lantern.
The pillar and the post.
The heart, the soul.
The dream and the ghost.
My love is like
an endless light
that shines across
the constant night.
Love is Like a Knife
Love is like a knife
stuck in the ground
the blade pointing
upward.
I am arched over it
trying hard
not to fall
too soon
or at least
too hard.
Unison
Take back the night
or at least the shadows
that dance about my
heart.
Banish these old ghosts
to another
place.
Let me see the other side of the night
when two hearts
beat in unison,
creating music
out of
silence.
John RC Potter is an international educator and gay man from Canada, living in Istanbul. He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist, May 2023). His poems and stories have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”, June 2023), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”, June 2023) and Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”, July 2023). It was recently announced that "She Got What She Deserved" has been named as one of the Top 100 Projects in the 7th Annual Launch Pad Prose Competition. Website: https://author-blog.org/