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
There was a girl
Who fell asleep in a rose.
For a pillow she took a purple petal
And the blanket too
Was soft as a princess’s cheek.
And her dreams were fragrant
And brought about the soundest sleep
As if upon a leaf
All that might be
Could really come to pass.
And when she wakes,
For she will wake refreshed,
She will sip upon a perfect sphere
Held within a purple
Rose petal glass.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the crepuscular hour
When receding day
And encroaching night
Meet at the apex of magic,
All the white flowers
Are filled luminescent
So they appear to glow
Beyond themselves
Like vivid stars
Floating moon bright
In the gloom of dusk possibility.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
To the dusk
Flowers put their moods
In scented wafts
On which the eyes might close,
Deferring to the only open sense
Of the tantalised nose,
In which such enrichment
Is found in sweet distillate
Of earth and loam:
The mind somehow
Washed in perfumed sherbet,
Cleaned by something
Made perfect,
Alerted to the essential element
Volatile under the mid summer moon.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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
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
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