Our Only Real Ownership

Our only real ownership
Is that
found in our senses:
The life owned by our eyes
The tingle on our tongue
The ear’s interpreted vibration
The dream encountered by the nose
The skin’s sensitive envelopment
And emotion’s yoking centrepiece.

All else
Beyond what is physically ours
Is but borrowing and stewardship.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

In The Garden Of Rooms

IMG_1329

IMG_1325

One enters through a gate in an old stone wall. There is a peaceful lawn surrounded by herbaceous boarders leaning against wisteria capped, flint studded masonry. Clematis crowns in places: in pinks and white cataracts and green, gushing falls. Shrubs flower in every corner. Great blowsy peonies glimpse from their folds and white finery. Bluebells peep from the underworld and ferns cling to high crevices. At the far end of the sky ceilinged room is an opening in the brickwork. One enters via stepping stones tattooed with the slow engravings of lichens.
In the next room the light is altered and flowers are blue and purple in hue and temperament. Scents are heavy and cool. An archway of twisted and gnarled wood is split by the epoch of vine held flowers: fists unclenched and offering nectars on tiny, fleshy instruments: stamens, pollen clad and bumbled at by the benediction of bees.
In the next room there is the deep scent of peace held in a nook and grotto of silence. More are the plant beings. More is the air and humming of insects in nectarous impulse.
In the next there is a goddess of love who owns the still moment and offers more to those who dally in the mood of her wishes.
In the next there are doorways to secrets, and paths to hidden worlds and spaces clean as streams born new from bubbling wellsprings.
In the next there are deeper things for the mind to fathom.
In the next there is the heart of the world and a fountain to which the lips might sip life’s generous bequeathment and know yet more doorways to the fragrant beyond.
In the next room…….
And in the next…….

Sharing

From all the world out there
I come across you.
We meet
With perhaps a word
Or even just a look.
We join for but a moment
And receive our personal gift:
That others in the world
Might understand
And share our view in this.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Equality

IMG_1293

Whether tended rose, vine
Or weed in bramble entanglement
We yearn the same dream:
And equal upon the earth
Take sustenance
In sunshine on the cheek,
Leaf or flowering petal.
We are the same in love
And level in our needs.
We are not different in our beings
Or our brotherhood.
We are one under the sun
And one in our differing.
We are together in our reach
For the sky blue expansion
Of life’s meaning.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Jump For Joy (Inspired by and dedicated to Jump For Joy! Photo Project)

First the intent.
Then crouching down,
Amassing, compiling, collecting
Energy in the spring of the self.

Then the trigger point,    unlatched…

Then the uncoiling of the self

A   N   D
T   H   E
S   U   D   D   E    N
W  H   O   O   S   H

As what was contained
Is released
In
A
Wondrous
Expansion,

Where
What
Is
Yet
To
Be
Conceived

Is
In
That
Instant
Possible,

A moment high
And without contrasting force
Or opposition.

The creative act:
The Freedom
To be oneself

And fly
Like we were meant to.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Inspired by and dedicated to Jump for Joy! Photo Project

May’s Ether

IMG_1290

May’s ether
Expressing in tussle and tumble
Of pale yellowgreen light

And the falling
Which is cascade
Of movement and stillness,

The half way point
Between gravity
And levity’s upward lift,

The plane
In which we manifest
And come to know its beauty.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Mid May Fragrance

Mid May cow parsley
Dematerialises in the lightest points
Of its flowers,
Alters reality with Hubris cologne,
Reaches with molecules:
Heaps and loads
The air
With sex,
Sweetens and fills
Sweetens and fills,
Purfumes to intoxicated mix
Of heady, pungent scentliness.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.