There are no words to describe
the sky’s deep blue intention,
the free thoughts of clouds,
the trees’ monochrome assertion.
Only an image
conveys the actuality of its imagery
and unburdens itself as it’s seen.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
© Image http://www.theochalmers.com
In the beginning I was sharp:
Hewn and fractured and split.
And there I lay in the elements for an
Eternity, in flicker of night and day.
Little by little I slid, slipped
And was washed to the river
Where I clattered: my edges
Blunted, broken and dulled.
After eons I found the reassuring sea,
Its salt brine sanctuary,
And was drawn in to wave grind
And the constant draw and push
Of each surge and counter rush:
The rolling swish of a billion
Touching stones caressed in fluid
Musicality and thrown high upon the
Tide line, to lie as almost perfect
Spheres; shaped, refined, defined
And rounded to the soothing curves
Of a microcosmic world reflected.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
The angles on which the eyes rest
offer us a glance of visionary
rightness, like the cool smoothness
of a pebble, millennia milled, yet
contrived by the hand of man.
They please us for they follow the
inward form and geometry of soul
and its archetypes expressed to the
world.
They reassure like the mathematics of
a flower or the formation of a star or
music’s mysterious harmonics, and
sooth our hearts with natural
symmetry.
They remind us of who we are: that
we are born to this whole and cannot
be separated.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
I don’t require an alarm clock to wake me in the morning. I rise with the eagerness of a child and the first twittering of birds. You know, there is nothing as fine as the dew sweet hours and no light so heavenly as the first born moment cresting deliciously: I am surely new with each turn of the world. My father toiled on this plot of Italian earth for fifty years or more. Those days were not good for winemakers. But for me it is joyous. Hard work, of course but I am greatly more for each moments focus. My land, strung with vines and decorated with Cyprus is the single most important place upon the earth. I walk it, each delightful day, noticing the minucia, the seasons play and the plants considered response. I do believe they are happy in their growth, flush with greenliness and health for all my careful tending and my gentle approach to the matter of their feeling: I greatly enjoy their being with this glad, succulent heart of mine. I wonder, am I rooted to this place, for I would not leave its ever calling pull upon my soul’s domain and would likely yearn with each terrible footstep into misadventure’s far away? I wonder too, if we are joined, my humanity yoked to the richness of this soil and all that is drawn so willingly? This is my home, among the vines: father to their needs, recipient of their riches, lover of the being we have become.
And the wine? Could it it be less the true wonderment, or measure less than joy, or be less than divinity made earthly? Well, I shall not tell what only a taste can convey.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
In a room filled with light
I would find my art
In the murmurings
Of my feelings
Introspect and widening.
I would take the time, and with it
Fashion a beautiful gift, spin the light
To fabricate a tapestry of seeing, in which I
Might gaze and find things as yet
Unformed in my understanding.
There would be so much light
And so much time. And my looking
Would both absorb and bring forth
The art of my living. I would live to the
Fullest I could live, happy in the dream
Of ever finding.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
To the garden I go,
To pace the concrete path
Bordered by greenery.
I examine the bud, then the tender
Shoot delicate in its unfold, changing
Each day imesaursbly. I witness the
Plant beings flush under the sun, their
Greenness quivering, their buoyancy
Mesmerised to reach for the high
Happy sky.
I step away for but a spell and to my
Returning astonishment I find a new
Garden, in place of the wonder I had
Left, yet more richly itself and bolder
In its expansive space.
The air too I breathe and find thankful
To my lungs, for the garden’s world is
Richly textual, a sensation in to which
I too unfold, as if all my wanting
Dreams of elsewhere heavens had
Been called home and yoked to the
Simple matter of a flower’s beautiful
Event.
Someone, a time ago, painted a
picture in the living stream of garden
beings. Their beautiful idea, via seed
and years of seasons, and the tender
touch of gardeners’, comes to me as
this:
A flush of crimson azalea.
And there a grotto in which generous
rhododendron blush and bloom in
roughs and frills.
And there peonies unclasped.
And there cherry pinks and white
petals lazily falling.
And there a dappled garden of
magnolia, like so many flamingos,
proud swans and poised egrets alight
each bough and branch.
And beneath in clusters: fritillary,
anemone and daffodils.
As if all were floating on a magical
mist of sunrise beginnings and first
dew drop breaths of times absolute
unfolding newness.
If I were an artist I might use this
fertile gift and call good thoughts
from fresh enriched wholesomeness
and wish them forward, so in a time
ahead, someone might find what I
have found and be likewise captive
and spellbound by nature’s gladness
to willingly adhere to the picture’s trellis.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
These words belong to us.
As I write these words they belong to me.
As you read them they belong to you.
I write them from a long time away.
You read them from an equal distance.
I feel satisfied as understanding reveals what I didn’t know.
You feel the feelings arriving to you.
If you see light: the light belongs to you.
If you see darkness: that too is yours.
If you see beauty: you are beautiful.
If you see ugliness: you have found your troll.
In the mirror between us on which my pen rests I see my face.
In the mirror between us on which your eyes rest you see your face.
These words belong to us.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Sometimes I just want to write
something beautiful: to conjure the
mood, to call the feeling, to be the
beautiful pen as it translates the
energy of self and brings something
new to my world, and the wealth
found in being it.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Crouching in rock gardens,
Among the hardy flowers
Strummed by the sky’s wide wind,
She finds her perfect moment
And is moved to art,
As if the moment had found her
To carry out its wish
To live beyond its simple richness:
Live once in being witnessed
And then again and again
In the paint’s still vivid kiss.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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