Amid the stalks’ voice
And rustling breeze,
And upon the gently swaying stage
A perfect purple plate
Delivered
So sweetly to the need
Of butterfly, moth
And bees:
A flower for all
On which to feed
And burrow deep
Within its pleasure.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
There are worlds
Within the world
Spheres within spheres
Expressions expressing
Fractals in patterns
Again and again
More and more
In the deepening
In the depth
In the giving
In the breadth
In the repetition
Of real realness.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
What is more important
Than summer swallows,
Blue on the wing
Hot on the lifting air
Fulfilled by rising insects
Swarming on scents
And invisible particulates:
The blooms of the sky
The language written hieroglyph
And aerodynamic,
And perfectly attuned
To being – – almost weightless?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
And the mother said
You can turn on my earth
And in a trice
My children
Will be upon
The glistening clods
To do their colonising
And consoling work.
And you may desert
The plentiful place
And turn it bland
With monoculture,
Dampen
The flourishing
With chemical
And beings augmented
And superior
All the while
Dashing yourself down.
But I will love you nevertheless.
And you may
Stricken the fertile
And the life giving,
Blemish it,
Injure it
And put it
To dust
And stone
And I will scar
For your learned eye
And then turn beautiful
With rest
And time
Fallow and forgiving.
And you may
Use me
Like your own heart used
And cut me
As your own blood flows
And deny me
As your own
Loneliness is made
In the crucible of your intention
And I will love you still
And whole
And love you
As only the land,
In its richness can
For killing is not mine
Nor
My children’s
And as the world turns
I will be
As I have been;
The force
The spirit
The energy
The lick of love
The empty space
The possibility
The lift
Behind it all,
The reason
And creativity
Rolling on, and endlessly on.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
In our madness
We would decline
The love
Of bees
Upon the land
And claim instead
Our MYOPIC
And SHORTSIGHTED
Neonicotinoid coated
Pounds and dollars.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Man’s Detritus
Cast high
With crisp seaweed
Under the bleaching sun.
All is soluble
In the end,
For the solvent
Washes twice a day
And more
In salt air
Corrosion.
Metal is eaten
Mottled bite
By rust smudge
And leafy fragmentation,
And plastic twine
Frays and becomes powdery.
The plastic bottle too
Loses integrity,
Degraded by the claiming sea,
Scrubbing every edge
To the smooth curve of bays
And roundish pebbles consistency:
Perhaps mocking us
For our solid forms
And legacies,
Our memories
Held aloft and alive –
To never die:
Or perhaps treating us
As equals on the path
To unbecoming
And the endless tide
Of things passed
And passing
To the voluminous being:
Then from dissolution
And constituents floating,
Reformation
Of something new and free.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Collectors these,
Unsteady flyers free
And amiable
In the gathering task
And work
To sip the draught
And honey heart
Of flowers
In their ripeness.
And somehow,
More the summer
For their busy
Singleminded focus
And adherence
To the well heads
Of fragrant,
Floral syrup.
And somehow,
More the flowers
As if fluoresced
In admiring presence,
For they ‘are’
For the bees,
Just
As the bees ‘are’
For the flowers.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Now buddleia’s
Lit fuses
Burn purple
For all
Denomination
Of kind bee
And for any
Which
Nectar’s flower
Is sweet and fragrant
Must
In the gathering need.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
After rain,
A moments solar respite
On the hydrophobic leaves.
Next,
To the light as wingtip air
And figures of flittering,
To the updraft
And the couplet spiralling
As high as love
And the mesmerisation
In mating’s
Centrifugal force.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Expressed in whorls
And soft tissue encased
And the fluid foot
In muscular reach,
Elegant as any
So long limbed
And herbivorous.
And what a beautiful
Tactile face
To sense
Moisture’s
Slick vehicle
And slide in silver grace:
The known world tasted
Through a moving salivation.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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