In the floor to ceiling window
Opens the picture:
The river
Glassy with the sky,
Smudged with autumn morning,
A pale blue glaze
In which mists cling
And spiral,
Calling back
The chill night
That stilled the dew drops
To a crust
And freed the tattered leaves
To mulch beneath the trees,
Sending out
A sweet and heady breath
Of spores
As life withdraws,
Releasing jealousies,
Indifferent now
To the russet matter
Discarded.
A chance
Late flower
Matures
Even while
All around
Become wearisome.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
A sieve
To strain gusts
Of leaf fall
And spore heady
Deluge
Strewn crisp
And thick
As winter snow.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
In the trees’
Brown shedding,
Loosened in November’s
Murk
And grey clouded
Movement
Northerly,
And with the lessening,
Light falling back
In earth’s tilt
Wintery,
Gusts come
To lick the leaves,
Scurry them
If they will heap
And hurry,
Or Drive the well wrapped,
Buttoned-up shoppers,
Bluster haired
And wind blithery,
To tread them
From browns to black,
If already
Moist paper,
Mulch layering
The sticky pavement walked.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
As life
Is called to the root
And winter’s closet,
To sleep
In earthen cloak
And fold
All that was fine summery
And light green
Is made russet
And tinged gold
In withdrawing chromatography.
The once plump
Is made papery
And freckled
With age,
And transition
Is fading display
Of the bold
Brought
To its beautiful knees.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Before the fall,
A flash
Of red chemistry
In the streak
Of autumn’s
Dying blaze.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Autumn begins
In the leaves’ metamorphosis:
Flames’ tongue
Scorching the green retreat.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Somehow they are flowers too,
Plump and central
To their strands
And gossamer petals.
Bodies worked at
And made in secret
Through the summer months
Among loam and beneath leaf,
Until the garden
Grown golden and fruitful,
Leaves crinkled
With the sum of age,
Boasts beasts
Materialised to the cradle
Between stems:
Their worldly wears
And accumulation manifest,
Their nets
Set to the bountiful breeze,
Their fingertips poised
For the flower forms of insects
Borne on sunshine
And wingbeats.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
First scents of autumn
Reach
From the must loam,
Impregnate the misty morn
With brown crinkled signs
And fruit
Slack and ready
For plucking.
The vigour of pale youth
Was a lifetime
Under the high sun.
Now the third season
Ripens and plumps,
Relaxes the stiffness
Of purpose
And loosens
To fermenting nap and doze
As the day shortens
And the leaves
Age to crispness,
While wasps fly drunk
On the sweet juice
Of fruit fall
And the billowing glut
To come.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
distilledvoice 