ageing

Road Towards Stasis

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

The old man watches
as time races:
all the young
frothing in its leading edge,
powerful on its surge,
the wave on which they surf:
confident like fearless children.

He was like them
in his unbeknownst youth,
careless with the ideas
of others: tossing them
for the new and exciting,
rubbishing the staid
and stilled establishment.

It irks him now,
not to see his work dismissed,
but that he has succumbed
to ageing’s inevitable drift
into beliefs hardening:
all of what he knows torn,
by the turn of the unconcerned,
from his grasp to hold it static.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Orchard

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

Six old codgers
Wizened as the crooked years
And mottled with age pigment
Lean on the honey stone wall
Resting their swollen joints.
Their feet are slippered in the grass
And feel the settled earth of the village,
Cradled in the seasons and strewn with
Apple blossom, windfall or crisp autumn leaf.
It’s spring now
And daffodils, yellow upon the pasture
Make good on the bulb planter’s promises,
And cowslips, mild in the moss,
Peep for the buttermilk light.
The old boys lean and watch,
Pondering as their grandfathers did
And the grandfathers before that.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Journey

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

Where is the boy lost
In the journey to the man?
Where is the balance point
In which he slips in metamorphosis
Through youth toward old age,
In transit of time’s
Morphing body become?

Perhaps he is not lost
But changed in skin
And greying hair
And stiffness in the bones,
The boy alive
But draped in memory’s
Encrustations
That sway the free thoughts
Of boyish dreams
From all their boyish freedoms.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

The Celebrity Face

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

The fear of movement
Steers the knife
And stills the flesh
In to a mask,
Free of wrinkles
And evidence
Of time past
And existence happening.

As if the demanding child
Were given
Its every shouted wish,
To go against
Life’s natural ageing path
And join
The Yes-Men horde
Branding the tampered
And augmented look
As the ‘must be’
– New beautiful –
For every old
Who holds too tight
To that which
Has long since departed.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016