Under winter sun
And mist
We leaned close
And kissed,
Remembering each other’s lips
And the fit
Of our embracing bodies.
And for a moment
We shared
The soft movement
Of our hearts combining
As all but our love dissolved.
Kiss
beauty
The Path
In the ever present now
We find ourselves
Expanding
In knowing –
That we are infinite being
At the crisp edge
Of happening:
Becoming ourselves
In the unfolding of the universe.
And sometimes we forget,
Dawdle lazy
On the road
Of our making:
Obstacles scattered
By our own hand
That make the journey
Seem tiresome and long
And effortful.
And sometimes we remember
The ever present now,
And step inside ourselves
And the universe,
And the being
That we always were,
And see
We too are always infinite,
And the road
And its obstacles
Are but illusions
On an illusionary path.
Photographer
In the moistened autumn air
Morning time is late,
Shuffling from the lengthening night
Through swathes of disintegrating leaves
Let loose the life that gripped
So urgent and productive
To branches now revealed.
Rooks craw in skeletal beech
Where only a smattering of bronze
Tenacious leaf, still reluctant
In the wind, cling jewel-like
And fluttering. And other birds
Pick at the glut of berries
With the needle of their song.
Somewhere in this,
Where the sky morphs
And reveals and holds
The whole landscape,
Walks the photographer,
Drinking in the all that he perceives,
Almost convulsing
With each perspective seen,
Almost pained by the utter beauty
Unfolding in fleeting perfections,
That even if time were his to own,
He could never hope to capture.
Dripping Auburn Golds
The world is dripping
Browns and auburn golds
As russet leaves, untethered
From life’s lunge and thrust
– Summer’s widened light –
Let loose the season’s
Fall, in energy unclasping
The matter made,
As all shrinks away
And narrows toward formlessness.
Autumn Flies Basking
Autumn flies basking
In the last, late light,
Absorbing the nutrient
Of the sun’s capacity,
Accepting a photons’ score
Of energy,
Recharging in the beneficence
Of a warming and wondrous gift.
Love
Float
On the upwelling,
The ever pushing pulse
Of love,
For it is yours
As it is you.
Oh, how that intellect
And riddled belief
Tells you
It isn’t so,
Oh, how cold and alone
And desperate
The separate minds feels,
How loathsome life feels.
Yet, still you float
Alive in reality,
The unacknowledged truth
A wedge between you and you,
The truth displaced
By fearful thinking.
Oh, but the truth is love,
The all encompassing feeling
Filling you whole,
A mother to your woe
Holding you close
As the child comforted.
The truth is love:
It will fill you if you but ask.
The Sun
The sun my heart
The sun your heart
The sun our shared heart.
But one sun
In whose radiance we bathe,
One heart
In which we ourselves are,
One love
Lifting every being
Into life,
Filling every being
With its light,
Carrying every being
Into the whole of its wholeness.
ⓒBen Truesdale 2020
Peach Of Plenty
Breathe upon
The subtle scent,
Allow your lips to linger
On its soft flesh,
Then,
Take a bite,
Chew the sweetness
And swallow the juices running freely:
Feel the plenty
Absorbed and nourishing,
Sustaining your life.
–
Look again,
For the peach is whole,
Untarnished, unbitten,
Perfect in its entirety.
–
Breathe upon
The subtle scent,
Take a bite,
Shortage was just a dream
For the peach is infinite
And you may take all you need.
Feast upon the ever-giving gift
And eat whenever you are hungry:
The peach of plenty
Is always yours.
Ⓒ Ben Truesdale 2020
The Sky Is Blue
The sky is blue
And deep
And impenetrable,
Absorbing my gaze
Which finds no purchase
In its azure nothingness,
Finds nothing
But lazuline, cerulean flawless flatness,
In which the cumulous materialise,
Condense in forever morphing forms;
There in expansion or contraction
Wispiness or burdensome bruising
Clotting before rain drops are birthed,
Or reconsidered by the air’s
Subtle hold, and withdrawn
Into the invisibility of blueness
And the dimensionless constant
Reaching beyond the reaching mind.
ⓒBen Truesdale f2020
Perspective
Whilst watering the garden pots
In the stilling dusk
I turn
And look,
Take in an unexpected perspective,
An angle from which I have not perceived,
And suddenly my breath
Is swept from my chest
By the beauty of the rush
Of plants propelled springward
And joyously becoming
Their exponential selves.
And in that gathering moment
My heart swells
For their vividness,
For the life sweet in their being,
For their entwining and wondering reach
Into spaciousness,
And for the bud of a poem
Born on the sap-surge
Of my lip,
And giddy with the prospect of flowering.
ⓒBen Truesdale 2020
