It’s as if the spirit,
Pale green and new,
Brushed our realm
For the briefest instant,
Igniting the cool magnitude
Wrapped in guts of plants
So all are suddenly aware
And blinking and charged
And rolling on in lattices
And internal xylem flows,
Abandoned to their task
To raise the sexual forms
Of flowers in to the high air,
Burgeoning with all the winged
Busyness and assistance
Brought by the sun’s worship.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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
For Mima
She drifts on a dream
That is a river,
One hand playfully trailing
In her wake,
Fingers idly
Tracing the ripples
At her fingertips.
She hums in sweet mellow moods:
Time unravelling
Like the gentle welling
Of the slow current.
She thinks:
Some live their lives
Adrift the river,
Holding nothing
Of the passing life
But the feeling
Flowing on meander’s
Subtle pondering.
She thinks:
I should like that life
And the peace
Found in the waltzing leaf,
In its slow and submerged tumbling
And ever rolling motion forward,
Drawn on always by the river’s irresistible pull.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the countryside
Hawthorn flirts salacious,
Fluorescing champagne heady
In puffs of magic breath
Strung light upon the hedgerow’s
Dour skeletal winter branch,
Split and thankfully broken
By plethora encrustations
In scores of tiny white flowers.
In the town and village
The roads become boulevards
In which magnolia offer
Perfect molluscs
To the neat and leafless,
And cherry blossoms
Enlighten the spirit
Like wedding bells
And confetti heaped,
While winter jasmine,
In shocks of vivid yellow,
Leaps out and streaks
In lurid flares of flagrant disbelief.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
These first tender breaths
Of mildness
In daffodil sun
And light’s expansion outwards,
Are call to every dormant root
And bulb hunkering,
And call to birds
Delighted on the branch,
To shake off the long sleep
For thoughts of pretty plumage
And spirited strut and prance
And skyward dance
On tendril wisp
Of energy awakening.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the emptiness
Of geometrics
There is peace
In the mind’s line.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
for and inspired by theo chalmers http://www.theochalmers.com
My father used to recount
The story of a green flash
Seen at sea when the
Sun slipped below the horizon.
As I watch the sun set
I find his story on my lips,
As though the flash were imprinted
As surely as if I’d seen it myself.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
They could be beings
Stepping from the light,
Holidaying where their world
Is burned on the beach
And paved upon the water
Like an avenue
To the sun’s blinding portal.
They could be water nymphs
Drawn by the pathway
Polished on the boundary
Between aqueous
And the air’s
More transient mix.
They could be boys
Doused in gold,
In sheen of salt water sweat
And light guilded fringes,
Frolicking in shimmering skins,
Oiled to perfect
Frictionless cartwheels
Found in the fluid
Of each childish leap
And featureless silhouette.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
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