flower

The Settling Dusk

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

In the slowing moments

Of the settling day

Where stillness nears its absolute,

The honeysuckle dusk

Blooms in windlessness,

Prickling the senses

Of moths.

This is dying:

The day spent,

The light away

Beyond the curvature of the world,

The night

Not yet begun.

There are sounds:

Birds chuckling in the canopies,

The swishing of cars,

A throttling motorbike,

But all belong

In the settling,

All are borne upon the air,

All are called

By the magnitude

To witness,

To witness a death

More alive than words

Could ever carry or convey.

Season’s Earthen Man

~ distilledvoice ~ 6 Comments

 

 

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The great man of seasons
Wakes at the apex of deep night
And winter’s shrunken solstice.
He tries the cracks of his eyes
In January’s skeletal underworld,
Perceives only the dormant trees
Upturned and rooted in freezing mists:
Their faraway lives in the ethers of dreams.

In February, time stretches.
The birds summon the bulbs.
Dawn steals two minutes from night
And dusk lingers, pinches two more.
By the seventh day
All the minutes of the month
Come as one welcome approach,
Snowdrops forerunning,
Outriders of the coming urge.

The earthen man stirs from slumber
In the barren mud,
Sits up in the flower bed
As a myriad of poking spears
Aimed at the newly sprung sun.
The coronations of daffodil kings
Are coming. As are the meteoric
Gear shifts of light,
And growth’s succulent mirroring
As air goes fresh to the breath
As is clean and clear to the head
In spring’s minting of newness.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017

 

Lantern

~ distilledvoice ~ 3 Comments

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A certain tungsten light
In filaments elemental
And burning with a dust
To dab upon the backs of bees,
To make them golden
As the source
That brought the all
From unseeing gloom
To vivid definition
And pleasure to the mind’s eye.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Magus

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

We are world
of lost magicians,
forgetting
the alchemy of our hands.
But look at the gardener
who with wands for fingers
summons the sweet ethers
of seasons
and coaxes lush forms
from the fine architecture
of mind, planting ideas
in soil’s enchantment
under the sun’s command.
Is he not creator above and beyond,
shaping reality to match
the deep archetypes
of his green heart’s desires:
a God, as any on high,
for in perpetuity he reins
among the beauty
of his earth bound legumes
and gifts of highfalutin flowers?

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016