Like a tide
Or the first sun-rays spilling
On the turning earth
At morning’s leading edge,
Warmth comes upon the famished
The starved,
The bankrupt
And the deprieved,
Changing them wholly,
Altering them irrevocably,
Illuminating
As they are witnessed.
The air in me
Is not mine.
The bone and the flesh,
And deeper defined –
The vessels, the nerves, the cells,
And deeper still – the molecules bound,
Are not me or mine,
But companions
In a movement of time.
Am I the river, a stream?
Am I the wind,
Am I the rain?
Together we are something
And nothing.
But alive is
This dance of form expressing,
Unfolding, degrading, re-expressing,
For this world is but a wondrous garment,
Worn and tore down
Worn and torn down
Worn and torn down,
Endlessly refreshing.
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.
When you see it,
It is there,
For your seeing is like the hand of God
Reaching out,
Touching the emptiness
And turning it golden and solid.
Hold the image in your mind’s eye
And it is done:
A thought
Realised in an instant,
Made in the moment,
In the very moment it was conceived.
The drunkard on the street
Begging with dirty fingers
Is no less worthy.
The banker mired in wealth,
Fiddling his taxes
Has access to everlasting love.
The warlord
Entrenched in violence
Could touch the eternal flame.
The everyman
Just getting on
Is a request away from energy.
The robber, the thief, the swindler,
And the police
Are equally entitled.
All are welcomed
Into the heart of love,
The sun inside, shining infinitely.
Bathe in the warm sea
Of universal light,
For it is near,
As near as your body.
You can reach for it,
Ask for it to warm your heart,
For it is as close to you
As your famished thoughts.
You can have it.
It is yours and always was,
You just turned away
For the briefest everlasting moment.
I wish plenty on my enemy.
I wish him the whole world.
I wish him strength
And vitality,
Happy times,
Fulfilment of his desires
And speed in their unfold
So he does not wait or want
Or hunger or thirst.
I wish plenty on my enemy
And that he finds love in his heart
For friends and family,
For his beautiful children,
And all the folk
In his immediate familiarity.
I wish him warmth
So he might sit comfortable
Within his body,
His mind dipping
In the infinite flow of love,
His cells infused
With wealth
And wonder at it all;
His mind wishing plenty upon his enemy.
A troop of goldfinch
Alight verbena,
Trapeze the bended stem
To plunder last year’s seeds
Now dry in the sheaf.
I recall last season’s butterflies
Tasting nectars,
Opening their sun drenched wing
Upon the purple heads,
And marvel now
At brotherliness:
Symbiosis motive in the world:
Investments dividend returned
In grateful harvests born
And born, and born again.
A Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017
Daubed on skin
And words alike:
All the shades
So coloured.
Hued by burning finger
And anger’s pointed flame:
Projection hurled
As flying wounds inflicted.
The stain: not on pure black skin
Or brown, or pink, or lily white
But on the eye
And on the mind,
On the filter
Through which we look
At the world
In its richness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The old man watches
as time races:
all the young
frothing in its leading edge,
powerful on its surge,
the wave on which they surf:
confident like fearless children.
He was like them
in his unbeknownst youth,
careless with the ideas
of others: tossing them
for the new and exciting,
rubbishing the staid
and stilled establishment.
It irks him now,
not to see his work dismissed,
but that he has succumbed
to ageing’s inevitable drift
into beliefs hardening:
all of what he knows torn,
by the turn of the unconcerned,
from his grasp to hold it static.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
distilledvoice 