Fruiting bodies
Like fleshy fingers
Examining the other world,
Of air and light.
And beneath
In the thready net,
Mycelium reach
Through the body
Of the earth
Drawing nutrient
From the discarded clothes
Of everything
Let loose
And shed.
The raw components
Once more
Spent
In transition
Of beneficence
Reinvigorated.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
No less
The channelled stream,
Roots
Pool slowly
Over a hundred years.
To our fast eyes
They seem still.
But to the stone
Looking on,
They are a mass
Of writhing tentacles,
Searching water source
Like whiskered mole’s
Thirsty earthward
Push and burrowing.
Are these living pipes
And strands of cellulose
The captors of water’s
Slip and silver
Or are the trees
The means
By which water
Yearns to alter state,
Transpirate
To lighter, airy
Agitation?
Are my eyes
But liquid desire
To see,
In beauties reflection,
The flow
Working through
The All
And everything?
Am I served
Or do I serve
The blood
Of the fluid earth?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Flows
Over eons
Work stone,
Fluid polishing
And gullying
The rock,
In summer trickle
Winter lock
And spring gush,
Carving bowles
And scoops
And sockets
In edifice
So cool pools
Dwell transparent
In blueness,
And shimmer
Soda bubble fresh
Where cataracts
Endlessly burrow.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The stream breathes
Cool and damp
To the foliage hues,
Moist to the hollow
And bank,
And Shadowed
By the lateness of the hour.
Only in a patch
Of borrowed light
Do poplars glow
Golden on every leaf,
Their high thoughts fluttering
In the low angle sun.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
A breath rippling
In the shimmer
Of water found trees,
Like monet-colour
Stippled in flecks
Of light,
Half way between
The indistinguishable
And the brush stroke real.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The boulangerie
Opens its sleepy eye
To the bird tweeting village
And looks upon
A once neat boulevard
Aged to a trunk lumpy
Old woman, clucking
Pleasantries as she ambles
With white crusty bread
To her shutter clad dwelling
Limp on its hinges
But crookedly beautiful
With time.
Her garden is put to work:
A crop of gnarled tomatoes
Fruiting in pastel lanterns,
Grapes yellowing
And freckled on the vine
And a font
Where honey oozes
Through the faucets
Of voluptuous figs,
Loosened and falling
As purses unclasped
And relaxing
Amid the gravel
In which herbs muster volatile
In air sweetened
To Provençal notes
And excited to fragrance
By a brush past
Or even the sun
Hot in the radiating stones.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Miasma condenses
Heavy blue
In the brooding
Underbellies
As if the cauldron
Were full
At a point of boiling
And might only ease
In manifestation
Of tearful rain
And reservoir’s
Releasing cascade.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
In to liquid
I slip sensual,
My skin
To the blue meniscus
Dipped and coated
And consumed
Until forgetting
Of boarders.
My being
Whole blended
In blue amnion
Aquiver
With silver light
And beams
Of aqua marine
Shimmering in electric fathoms.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
She has highlights in her hair,
The butter kiss
Of summer light
And fragrant breeze
Painted there.
But it’s her thoughts
That wear
The gold
Of lifted mood
And tussle
Beautiful
In halcyon
Of lofty space
And blue sky
Incantation,
Where shine
Is gloss
Upon the body
And soul
Is spirit
Reaching through matter.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
When it wakes
It hears the flowers
Call in scents.
It desires
The ultra violet
Of colours
And the deep
Well of love
In which nectar pools
And collects.
When it wakes
It thinks of nothing else
But the warmth on the wing
And the burrowing head
Thoughtless in the dream
Of pollinating.
When it wakes
It be itself
And thinks
Not a thought
Outside of its being.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
