The Gardener’s Art

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He is brother to the painter
Though uses the green fingered touch
As brush stroke.
And his painting is pure transience
For no sooner
Has his intention
Made it to the page
Than the mother has her say
And brings her children
To cherished approximation,
No less perfect
Than the vision thought,
Imagined and sought
With the soil smudged hands.

And always the picture moves:
With bees sometimes
And sweet breezes
And lush imperceptible growth,
And butterflies on hot days
And of course
The season’s invariable work.

And each year
The page is pre-set
With innumerable ideas
But also blank for new,
And arrives as if it were the first
And not cyclic progeny
Of all time’s happenings
Manifesting in blooms
Among the foliage,
Provocative and colour flecked.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Particles Of Life

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In the evening
Bugs like particles
Fill the space
Between the trees.
They arrive to my eyes
Flitting entropy
Across shadow,
Carrying specs
Of light apparent,
Moving like tiny
Free reaching pieces
Of the hot sun
Setting in the west.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Blackbird

A blackbird hidden
Among the high branches
Whittles a song
With the tool
Of its tongue
And sculpts
The undisciplined air
To the fine art
Of a tune,
Whistled and warbled
And finally returned
By the breath
Conveying the voice,
Beautifully transformed.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Mood Of Flowers

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A mood of flowers
Blooms upon the village
As if an agreement
Had been drafted
Between last years seeds
And every verge
Offering to couch botanic.
And ever crevice
Containing a crumb of soil
Or even a puff of dust
Lends its dampness
To root indulgence florid,
Borrowing mid-day heat
Radiated from old stone walls.

And the gardens?
Well, they have burst their borders
And splurged to soften
The corners of the village
With lilac drifts
And wisteria trained to show
The fullness of a May day.
And iris tongues
Loll and flounce
And poppies are prominent
Atop the walls,
And all the other
Bells and beauties
Claim the air with scent
And the space
With perennial buttresses
Of stalks and spikes
And overarching species,
Daubing brickwork
With exuberant flourishes
Like the flair of the artist’s mood.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Cherry Blossom

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A day or two at most
In this floriferous moment,
Where white is defined
In garlands
And upon the breeze
And strewn upon the green.

The garden in pale fresh notes,
Hardly even a thing
Before altered
And borne away
Upon the wind filled clouds
Searching in the blueness.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Blue Mists Of Evening

The blue mists
Of evening’s closure
Blurs vistas
To dreams
And wending paths
Petering and smudged
Until the far hills
Clump with tree forms
To places adrift
White vapours
Plump with beginnings
And mystic spaces
In which only the shrill bird call
Punctuates.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

In The Condensation

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The cool dawn
still tendrils damp
on dew cloaked leaf
and humid mist
of the night breath diminishing.
Each and every blade
of the mop flop grass
wears a sparkling jewel
in which the sun quivers
as a white hot fragment.
And the concrete path
mottles transpiring art
in patches of sunshine
scolding from behind
swift passing clouds,
while every vigorous plant
is flushed to upthrust,
called and prompted
by firm osmotic grasp
and fluid’s turgid evaporation.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

The Writer’s Heart

The lusty heart
strains and fills to full,
pumps for the pen,
swells with the voice,
reaches through the hand’s device:
unburdens oratory cascade
in reams of white sheets impressed
with the ink of its desire to be,
and speak of what it feels
and finds upon the page.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

For All My Muses

Upon your mortal flesh
my eyes, excited to new seeing,
find windows
in which the script
unravels like quicksilver ink
heart-fast across the page,
and sees off
the mood mundane
written boring in to static fact
of joyless unbecoming,
and instead
thrills the moments in their chain,
and makes them
stones for stepping,
and feet, light for skipping,
as if life, after all,
were not ceaseless, aggravated toil
but flight, free upon the wing.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016