Branches burned black
to silhouette
of a carbon footprint.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
© Image by Ann Truesdale
Migrant Crisis
For fifty years
The shining west
Broadcast the abundant dream
In films and on TV sets,
Sold their gloss of golden
Paving and streets opportune,
Livelihoods so plentifully clean:
Advertising the job lot
To the chink in the human heart
Where wishing spills out
From wanting’s germinated seed.
And now all the world desires
A piece of the unreal dream
And comes, unstoppable,
In tide of need’s imbalance.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Freshly Pressed
Nothing as delicious
As the idea’s arrival
At the pen scratch
And nib of newly unfolded time.
Here is creativity
At its cutting edge.
New and fresh as dew
At risen light,
As momentary
And transitorily alive,
For a spell’s duration,
Before soon subsided
And dimmed by
Pristine light’s creation
And the joy of thoughts,
Freshly Pressed.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Need I?
Need I use guiding word
And direction:
The thing – described, imaged,
Processed through the brain of I:
Not here
Where the boiling and molten sky
Directs without narration.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
In The Summer Dusk
In the summer dusk
all is sweet temptation
in musk of earthy being:
even the grass
is dew sugar first hay,
tender and sun soaked elixir
to horsly kind,
frolicsome and effervescent
to pink noses everywhere.
And what air: warm as comfort,
barefooted and shirt undone,
base note to the roses flood
of velvet, lusty tantalisation:
a shedding of potions loving
and daintily perfumed.
What dwells in this scented night,
but creatures of the stillness,
hid deep from our slice of daily life,
nocturnal to it
and waking only to the moon
and sweetness magic from
disgorging night-flowers.
A hedgehog snuffles and is alive.
Moths are vibrant,
aerialed to the pheromonal moon
and unseen currents high and trail like.
And beetles alight the moonbeams,
unfurl their hidden wings
and step to the unsteady air,
to taste and be beside
the molecules abundant.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Days Are But A Flicker
Days are but
A flicker
To the lichen’s
Liver spot
Upon the rock’s
Weather worn skin.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
The Blogger Plant
Like creepers
And tangled vines
Urging for the high light,
Bloggers speak out
With leaves of thought,
Search for every photon dealt,
Yearning daily taller
In appreciation’s height
For sunshine on the face
Of their creation.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Darkness Shapes
Darkness shapes:
Defines green feathery fronds,
Allows light in to being.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Primordial Stream
We set off up the stream,
Beginning in sunlit glade
And shimmer of water,
Licking each golden stone.
A pair of wagtails flit bold
In their territorial patch.
The banks are meadow flanked
But soon rise to steepness.
Beech and oak find purchase,
Dappling and putting much to shadow.
A luscious gloom settles, heavy
Breath of deepest, dimmest forest.
The stream becomes primordial,
Carves bowls in stone, cups to which
Birds might sip and swallow swirls and falls
As channels form slowly deeper.
Moist darkness crouches in
Underhang and ferns as endless
Kingly crowns sprout in revelations
Upon the earthy tiers, and foxgloves
As colour pronged diviners speak
To purple heavens reaches.
Trees too die. And some span the crevice,
Long ago fallen and half rotted soft
With moisture’s seeping ingress,
Wearing a jewellery of mysterious
Polyp, their woody hearts absorbed,
Transformed to plate-like fungus.
A coat of moss clings to every
Surface: beard of the forest
Spirit, wizening to bark and stone
Alike, a mat of tendril and twisted
Whiskering leaf, bog wet and reservoir
To humid air’s closeness. And gnats,
Fast in an escaped sun beam, find their
Golden scribbling above a still pool
And with their swift speed mark the
Quantum stillness of the hollow in the
World where time flows only as the stream,
In gurgle’s timeless ever movement down.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Light’s Equality
The bridge, the cloud, the sand
And the mirror of the tide,
Burnished bronze in light’s equality.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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