From Soil

February mizzle wets

The lights

Of snowdrop, crocus

And eager daffodil,

Soothes and lubricates

Their birth

Through soil

Mulched humus rich

And frangranced sweet

With spore’s mycelium.

To think,

Some slander this complexity,

Call it dirt and mud

Overlooking the quantum truth

Of gardeners’ gold,

Both foundation

And sustenance

For all.

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.

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