Inspired by nature

The Third Season

~ distilledvoice ~ 3 Comments

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First scents of autumn
Reach
From the must loam,
Impregnate the misty morn
With brown crinkled signs
And fruit
Slack and ready
For plucking.

The vigour of pale youth
Was a lifetime
Under the high sun.
Now the third season
Ripens and plumps,
Relaxes the stiffness
Of purpose
And loosens

To fermenting nap and doze
As the day shortens
And the leaves
Age to crispness,
While wasps fly drunk
On the sweet juice
Of fruit fall
And the billowing glut
To come.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Preserving The Catch

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Fishermen haul in their net,
Bring in the unseen dimension
While fair skinned tourists
Haul in a delightful authenticity.

The net is wriggly with silver reflex,
Scales shed as a last desperate breath
Bloodies the gills, and tourists snap
In their own reflex to capture the dying light.

It soon quells as each silver fish
Relinquishes and stills on the beach.
Fishermen tidy their nets and
Tiny fry, caught but unwanted

Dry on the sea of sand,
Embalmed in the photograph
In which tourists preserve,
Just as the fishermen salt

And lay their catch in the sun.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

So Slowly

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So slowly
Yet the years pass by
And old roads
Enveloped
By the seasons fruit
And fallen leaves
Brought down
To the carpeting ground
Are each year
Millimetres closer
To the countryside,
As new formed earth,
Like age rings
Of the tree,
Mark the cycle
By their regular encroachment.

It is thus
That our histories
Are buried.
And time is immeasurable
As it flows
Sometimes slowly
And other times
Like a swift tide,
Our ancestors
Sunk in the mud
Of generations,
As the millimetres
Have built
To the platform
On which
Life now resides

And finds us alive,
Upon the skin
Of now happening
But with deep roots
Drawing and sucking
On the layered sediments
Of history
And all those
Dead ideas.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

It Rained In The Night

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The air is moist
And humid heavy

But fresh
With new rain,

Still dampening down
Still weighing

Each leaf droopy,
Each bended stalk

Gravity bound.
Some flower heads

Are dew drunk
Lively, plush

And open eyed,
As perfect

As purity
In droplet spheres

Expressed
Upon the petals body.

But some are dashed
To autumnal fall:

The rose
Shaggy on its swollen hip,

Curling
And fading tears

Scattered in the falling.
It’s as if

The night could
Reach beyond

It’s dark boundary:
Wet finger tips

Invading the day
Or morning, at least:

Its species
Conveyed in fluid:

The slugs
The snails

Putting down
Their silver trails

For the sun’s
Open touch

And glitter
In awakening.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Brother Hedgerow

~ distilledvoice ~ 3 Comments

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Sometimes
He is broad as thicket
Or enclave copse.
Sometimes
He is thin and sparse,
With but an eyebrow’s tuft
Skirting the field boundary.
Sometimes
He is lone bramble
Upon a flat plain.

But always,
Wherever he rests
He is tangle
And vegetal mess
Of thorn ramble
And nettle,
Dry stick and twine
Woven to nest
By birds
Who feel the home
In his charity.

If he had friend
In the human field
He’d call scarecrow
Brother,
For he too is silent
And watchful,
And made
with a bundle
Of dry stems
Plumping the body
Of his jacket.

But still he is beautiful
Though he is ragged:
For in April
He is delicate
With hawthorn
And blackthorn bloom.

And in June
His foxglove reach
Invites bees
To a hundred purple gullets.
And wild honeysuckle
Are his delicate hands
And the pale instruments
Of his fingertips.
And upon his brow
Are white elder crowns,
Sunward seeking
And scented.

In September
He is ripe and juicy
With the blood of elderberries
And the pert invitation
Of blackberries strung
Like necklaces,
Many and fruitful.
And crab apples,
Hard as stones
Grow gnarled
While sloes
And wild plums
Are succulent on every
Loaded bough
And branches’ reverent bow.

And always
At his feet
Are the rustling species,
Snuffling and foraging
The dry shadows:
The timid shrews,
The field mice twitching,
The hedgehog unfurled
And fearless
And the Badgers
Trotting pathways:

All these
His tender friends
And tenants
To the openness
Of his limbs,
Gathered snug
To his rosehip chest
And the leafy beneficence
Of his embrace,
Herbaceous and enveloping.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Pottering In Identity

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He strolls
Among his trees,
Pushing the barrow
Before him:
Work neither heavy
Nor light
But on the balance
Of his good shoulders
And measured
Equal to the pace
Of an afternoon
With wind
Constant in the pines
And sunshine
Inching the hours,
Shadows dialling
The length of the day.
There is deep satisfaction
In knowing his land:
The microclimate at the far end
Where a puddle makes a winter stream.
The row of oak
Marking the boundary
Is no less his own,
Nor the gentle slope
Not other
Than his home.
There is something primal
In his ownership,
A regal spirit
Felt deep in his guts
And through the soles
Of his feet,
An energy felt
As though the ground
Itself could speak
And claim
The man,
Just as the man
Claims the land
As his identity.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Flawless

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angel

Clouds
So touched
By sunlight
And it’s setting
In the west

That they might
Harbour cherubs
In soft folds
And angels blushing orange
Upon the gilded edge.

In vapour robes
Of salmon pinks,
Moist in cirrus’s
Spiritual clothes
And cumulus draped
Upon their bodies

Like light
And sky blue complexions
To make their face
And eye depth
Flawless.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Dawn Of The Blood Red Moon

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

Summer mist collects
In pools beneath the trees,
Seeps and infiltrates
The copse,
Coats and clings
Like breath to the river bank,
Disappears things
To the cool substance
Of dreams.
The ephemeral magic
Of the unseen
Dampens
Yet holds the scents
Of ripening crop
And the soil’s loam
And the must
Of summer grass
Sweetened and distilled
To perfume
Annotating the earthen land
Below the moon
Glowing waxy
And vast
And so low and close
And red with the blood
Of myths.
And for just a moment
Man’s potential
Drifts in the red possibility
Of the clouds
And the moon is a heart
And the mind is rich
In seeing,
And any question
Brought to the lips
Finds its home
In the instant
It manifests,
In satisfaction’s pale light
And the full lunar fact
Of wisdom’s beholding.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015