Under soft February light
Where warming ethers
Carry earthy scents,
I remember my spring self
Among crocuses.
And yet again my heart is lifted
By the tide turn
Of day-length stretched,
Being motivated
To peep as a myriad
First shoots.
And yet again
The soft spell
Light upon my heart
Shimmers hazy
As sunbeams diffuse
In the mellow heavens,
And I can’t quite tell
If this space myself
Is me or the world
Or just spring’s fluid
Billowing out from itself.
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.
Fragrant rose
Destroy me with weapon of your scent
Until I am laid bare
And broken into pieces
With but one sense left
And one breath
To offer you wholly.
Then let me die
In your folds,
Loosened from the world,
Myself thrown
Headlong into the softness
Of your beauty.
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.
I walk in reality, breathing the breath,
Feeling the body, seeing with the eyes.
The world is beautiful
For it happens
Despite the thoughts in my head.
The garden grows, expands into spring,
The foliage lush with promise.
The cat sits by the pond, under the
Blossoming trees, and amid daffodils.
He breathes the air too,
Watching, always watching,
Thinking not one moment beyond the
Moment he’s in.
The flower of my heart
Blooms on a stem
Of gossamer energy,
Upsurging from the world
Behind the world,
The space that is formless.
My heart smiles on me
As the heart behind the heart smiles,
As love comes
Like a river from the source:
Like a river from the source
Provided endlessly.
New air,
The first in the world
And light as spirit imbibed,
Holds the scent of morning.
And there is twittering
Of innumerable birds,
Joyous as the magnolia buds
In voluptuous opening.
For all things are expressing
Their being in timeless rebirth,
The song of spring
Once more alive.
The morning is fresh
Upon the dew soaked forms
Called to their greater love
In the body of the sun.
Everything is light
And as apparent as my condensing breath,
The world and my heart alive,
Brought by a transient glistening.
Softly treads March
Upon the sun-warmed earth:
A new green pallet
Strewn in daplings
Beneath trees
Still winter shod
But bearing
Blue sky and bud.
And Beneath:
A brief trumpeting
Of yellowness
Before the sky shades
With a canopy of leaf.
©Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017
©Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017
distilledvoice 