On the mellow mild
In the yellow breath
Beset the bare branch,
Spring flowers undid
Before the unfurling leaf
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017
flowers
The Night Rain
The night rain
Loads the morning foliage,
Hauls each stem down
With a sheen.
The damp leaves
Lick the air,
Exfoliating pungencies
And sap soaked humidity,
Hunkering in rich breath
Of the wood scent,
Releasing stomatal volatiles
And chlorophyll astringencies,
Tempered by the nectars
Of bedraggled flowers,
Lolling before the sunshine
Straightens them.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Symbiosis
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
Wind Chimes
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
The Gardener’s Art
He is brother to the painter
Though uses the green fingered touch
As brush stroke.
And his painting is pure transience
For no sooner
Has his intention
Made it to the page
Than the mother has her say
And brings her children
To cherished approximation,
No less perfect
Than the vision thought,
Imagined and sought
With the soil smudged hands.
And always the picture moves:
With bees sometimes
And sweet breezes
And lush imperceptible growth,
And butterflies on hot days
And of course
The season’s invariable work.
And each year
The page is pre-set
With innumerable ideas
But also blank for new,
And arrives as if it were the first
And not cyclic progeny
Of all time’s happenings
Manifesting in blooms
Among the foliage,
Provocative and colour flecked.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Metamorphosis
I walk in to the garden
A man
In clothing and footsteps
And thought
And then as the banks
Of perennial leaf
Touch my check,
Reach to meet
My enquiring hand,
And as my eye,
Like foraging bee
Dips and inspects,
And my ears,
Drawn to perceive
The wood pigeons
Breathing symphonies.
And as my nose
Catches strands
Of scent upon the breeze,
I change
From the modern, disinterested man
To the lover
Of my brother the leaf
And my friends
The birds and insects,
Quick-winged under foliage
And shadow
And proud to own the branch
And scrump the flower heads.
And thus I become
The green thing,
Half man, half herb,
Wishing for the heady scents
Of earthen loam
And soil must
And coolness of the mother,
Where the flesh of my heart
Might be lain in a hollow
To absorb the deep nutrient
And feel the root of forever.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Dusk Honeysuckle
To the dusk
Flowers put their moods
In scented wafts
On which the eyes might close,
Deferring to the only open sense
Of the tantalised nose,
In which such enrichment
Is found in sweet distillate
Of earth and loam:
The mind somehow
Washed in perfumed sherbet,
Cleaned by something
Made perfect,
Alerted to the essential element
Volatile under the mid summer moon.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Butterfly Love
Around the white lilac bloom
Two white butterflies flirt
In spiral mirror images,
As if they were once
The petals on which
They now alight,
Revisiting for but the briefest instant
Of memory past
Before once again
Gambolling on updrafts
And the gentlest touches
Of wingtip flutterings
In the dance of butterfly love.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Mood Of Flowers
A mood of flowers
Blooms upon the village
As if an agreement
Had been drafted
Between last years seeds
And every verge
Offering to couch botanic.
And ever crevice
Containing a crumb of soil
Or even a puff of dust
Lends its dampness
To root indulgence florid,
Borrowing mid-day heat
Radiated from old stone walls.
And the gardens?
Well, they have burst their borders
And splurged to soften
The corners of the village
With lilac drifts
And wisteria trained to show
The fullness of a May day.
And iris tongues
Loll and flounce
And poppies are prominent
Atop the walls,
And all the other
Bells and beauties
Claim the air with scent
And the space
With perennial buttresses
Of stalks and spikes
And overarching species,
Daubing brickwork
With exuberant flourishes
Like the flair of the artist’s mood.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Beside The Stream
Beside the stream’s
Incessant polishing
Of stones grown
Round and golden
As sun-speckled eggs,
Groves of lush garlic leaf
Cluster to the damp lips
Of the woodland floor
And raise illuminations
To light the meandering path
In its pondering
Through dappling glades
Of newborn leaf
And bluebells
In strewn multiples
And swathes ankle deep.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
distilledvoice 