Share The Light

I have drunk

From the standpipe

Of sour belief,

Constricted and miserly,

Gripping every drop

In an effort to control preciousness,

Becoming a gaunt shadow

Because of it,

For I am a man of this world.

Oh but the world urges to flow outward,

And the standpipe,

Rusty and dripping poverty,

Is but the mind’s eagerness

To hold love down.

For there are some

Whose eyes see beyond the standpipe

To the infinite source,

A waterfall

In which all need

Is foiled in an everlasting deluge.

And for others there is no standpipe

Denying the flow,

Only the mind

Constructing a fictional valve,

Dispensing injustice

And such a limited view.

For energy is free for all,

And you may drink your fill

Until you are full and wholesome

And ready to share

All the light in the world,

Knowing there is no end to it.

Being

Moving in the garden

My body is free

As new expectant air,

Mellow in the coming.

The push of bulbs

Rises through my limbs,

The sap called by the source

To come and become.

Is there better than being,

Just being?

The gnats know,

Ascribing their wisdom

In choreography

Written on the breeze

Where the afternoon is nothing

But a pale yellow light.

Symbiosis

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From dirt springs complexity
In the structure of flowers.
And to these
Come the elequance of bees,
Symbiotically bound
To the promiscuity
Of the plant’s future needs,
Yet self-serving on nectar’s
Seeping generosity
And suckling on plenty’s summer day
And its eternal rotations,
Both diurnal
And the season’s sleep
And interludes of wakefulness,
Through which the sun arouses
Generations of dormant seeds.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice

Cotswold Summer

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There is a moment in the Cotswold year
When the rolling wheat fields
Summon the golden hue of the stone
On which all is built:

It is the baked brown of a village
Ripe upon the history of the hills;
The colour of summer made hay
Adhering to the sparse pasture

And bitten at by shaggy sheep.
It is light to warm the heart
And grow roses from the sun
Still kept at dusk

In the envoys of the warm bricks
Radiating in ochre moods
As the jasmine clad night enfolds
All within its sumptuous scents.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Wind Chimes

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Stirring in the gentlest breeze
Wind chimes
Bob soundless:
I hear in their silence
The near fountain
Tappling cool in many droplets
To the pool’s perturbed rest
Of bubbles swayed
By concentric rippling
And breaths in pulsing evenness.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Kiftsgate Court

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From the brow
Of the wooded escarpment
Eyes are drawn
To the picture
In a vista’s reach
Into mists and the rolling plain.
And then a near rose
Beckons come close
To the petal’s crenellations
And breathes as sweetly
As the lover’s kiss,
Competes with all the faded distance
And offers the planted bed
Afire with flowers
And boughs drooping
Under the weight.
And then again the call
From between scots pine:
The wood
Creeping down the vale,
Hauling the mind away
To thoughts afar and blurring.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016