The world is dripping
Browns and auburn golds
As russet leaves, untethered
From life’s lunge and thrust
– Summer’s widened light –
Let loose the season’s
Fall, in energy unclasping
The matter made,
As all shrinks away
And narrows toward formlessness.
Autumn flies basking
In the last, late light,
Absorbing the nutrient
Of the sun’s capacity,
Accepting a photons’ score
Of energy,
Recharging in the beneficence
Of a warming and wondrous gift.
Whilst watering the garden pots
In the stilling dusk
I turn
And look,
Take in an unexpected perspective,
An angle from which I have not perceived,
And suddenly my breath
Is swept from my chest
By the beauty of the rush
Of plants propelled springward
And joyously becoming
Their exponential selves.
And in that gathering moment
My heart swells
For their vividness,
For the life sweet in their being,
For their entwining and wondering reach
Into spaciousness,
And for the bud of a poem
Born on the sap-surge
Of my lip,
And giddy with the prospect of flowering.
ⓒBen Truesdale 2020
I step into absolute stillness.
On the horizon
Mist shifts in ethereal veils.
The houses on the hill disrobe
Slipping from their misty dreams
As the sun begins in the East.
I step into absolute stillness.
The oranges of early morning
Warm my cheek and raise
A fresh scent from the succulents
As they absorb the first light.
The stillness pervades
Holding all things:
Beauty arises
In all that is worldly,
Both natural and made
Are vivid in the same way,
Reality seems to have a texture I can taste,
One which my eyes drink in.
I breathe a luxurious breath.
I exist
And I step into absolute stillness.
Ⓒ Ben Truesdale 2020
Joy in the twittering birds
Alight the air,
The wingbeat uplifting;
A fleeting moment
Agrasp the twig in bud.
Joy in the first bees
Suddenly innumerable.
Joy in the fly
Sunning himself on the leaf,
Absorbing the nutrient
Of the sun.
Joy in the exuberance
Of every plant,
Plump on the moment.
Joy in the resonance
Of the wood pigeon’s throat,
The highlighting of treetops
And branching canopy.
Joy in the morning mist
Shrouding the distance,
Enrobing the far away
In a joyous dream.
Joy in the saxophone
Wafting from the neighbours garden.
Joy in the children’s voices
Lost in the their play.
Joy in the sound of a car
Thrumming up the hill.
Joy in the stink of cat shit
Enlivened by the warmth.
Joy in the body
And joy in the body of the world.
Joy in everything.
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.
The morning is sweet
With the bird’s high ether,
Trill, and as full
As their abandon.
The air is warm and fragrant,
Infiltrated with wood smoke
And the earth’s low savour.
In a faraway glance,
The distance fades in to mist.
The morning in the breath is sweet.
As you recline on the freshly mown grass
With your eyes closed
And the sunshine
Warm on your face,
Tell me there is no heaven.
And with birdsong
In every angle of your ears,
And the sweet breath plentiful
And touched by the scents on the breeze,
Tell me again, there is no heaven.
In the sweet spring wonder
The bud of my life opens,
Synchronised with the buds
Of the earth.
The air contains me
And the quivering bird,
Its heart broken open,
Broken into song.
Morning is beautiful,
Fresh as imbibed breath,
Acknowledged
As spirits subtle vapour.
The scent is the hawthorn
Of my childhood,
When I first saw,
When my eyes were first open.
I am here again,
Bathed in deliciousness,
Open mouthed
That I should be.
distilledvoice 