Beneath the succulent leaves,
In the shadow cast
Where harsh sun
Fragments
To a gentle dappling,
Proboscis flowers
Scent the musty undergrowth
With sweetness derived
From intense concentration.
Like the artist
Who dedicates the hours
To find a pure manifestation,
The flower too
Is single minded
In its delicate craft
And delights in its creation.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
The earth turns
In incremental light.
The day expands
In millimetre shoots,
A green touch
Like lovers’ skin
Mirroring pale light
And new sun contours.
Each bulb nestles
In the mother’s pulse,
Follows exact
Circadian match:
The beautiful dance
Of closest partners.
Like all living things
In sweet, earthy bondage,
Not one strays
Nor splits disobedient
From irrefutable law
And physical fact
Of freedom
To be absolved,
And to shadow
First, ethereal footsteps.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
All loose
From the sap flow
Nourishment.
All ground dwelling
And russet blush:
Egg speckled,
Wrinkle-rind
And pith withered.
All in sepia age
And near translucency,
The fading fruit
Engorged
By the swallowing ground.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Birds
Wet wing above
The scrub and stick
Of winter shrub
And leafless tree
Surfing
The rush and gust
And invisible bluffs
Warping sky’s
Endless grey.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
From the ragged beauty
Of the season,
Genetics speculate
A hope
In rose flower,
Half crippled,
Half pert lip
Of summer love,
Sent to test
The possibility
Of love’s emergence
And early awakening
To the surge of imminent spring.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Last years
Sodden relic
Browns in decrepitude
And skeletal memory.
Next years
Tightly packed,
Protected shoot
Waits in green expectancy.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice
Swathe of
Bracken brown
Entanglement
Stitched through
With Bramble.
A burr enmeshed,
Stalks
In camouflaged web
Lie limp,
Draped seasonal.
A winter tree,
Like a thistle head
Hooking
Loose threads
And dry tendril.
Ground-sink
Draws matter
In degraded death
To fall soil-ward
In depth autumnal.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Clouds,
Gale grey
And hasty
Full of
Wind-thrift
And mischief,
Steal leaves
And flick
Them
Rotational
And tumbling,
Gimballed on gust
And inconsistency
Tremulous in the trees
Bare branch
And sway
And creak
And core wood
Straining in root-sap
Xylem tendons,
Dormant and slow
But rope strong,
Green strong
Foundation
To the earth’s
Sound clag
And sucking
Cohesive force
To hold the winter
Skeletal
And disrobed,
And canvas blank
For next year’s newness.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Perfection
In light’s revelation,
In the leaves’
Dying pyre,
In their fall
To the sodden ground
Or in the river’s
Swift transition.
Perfection
In the tree trunk,
In its conforming shape
Wound around
The order of being:
Beauty in naturalness
And spontaneities arrival
In art’s perfect work.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
© image Ann Truesdale, 2015
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