In the evening
Bugs like particles
Fill the space
Between the trees.
They arrive to my eyes
Flitting entropy
Across shadow,
Carrying specs
Of light apparent,
Moving like tiny
Free reaching pieces
Of the hot sun
Setting in the west.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the crepuscular hour
When receding day
And encroaching night
Meet at the apex of magic,
All the white flowers
Are filled luminescent
So they appear to glow
Beyond themselves
Like vivid stars
Floating moon bright
In the gloom of dusk possibility.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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
Wood pigeons
And the soft-throated dove
Strum the hollow harp,
Cooing summer lullabies
Of love and sunshine
And offering
From feather-puffed breast,
A purring resonance
Put to the warm breeze
Replete with lawn mower whirrings
And the sweet green scents
Of grass, newly cut.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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
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
It’s as if the spirit,
Pale green and new,
Brushed our realm
For the briefest instant,
Igniting the cool magnitude
Wrapped in guts of plants
So all are suddenly aware
And blinking and charged
And rolling on in lattices
And internal xylem flows,
Abandoned to their task
To raise the sexual forms
Of flowers in to the high air,
Burgeoning with all the winged
Busyness and assistance
Brought by the sun’s worship.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
A day or two at most
In this floriferous moment,
Where white is defined
In garlands
And upon the breeze
And strewn upon the green.
The garden in pale fresh notes,
Hardly even a thing
Before altered
And borne away
Upon the wind filled clouds
Searching in the blueness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the countryside
Hawthorn flirts salacious,
Fluorescing champagne heady
In puffs of magic breath
Strung light upon the hedgerow’s
Dour skeletal winter branch,
Split and thankfully broken
By plethora encrustations
In scores of tiny white flowers.
In the town and village
The roads become boulevards
In which magnolia offer
Perfect molluscs
To the neat and leafless,
And cherry blossoms
Enlighten the spirit
Like wedding bells
And confetti heaped,
While winter jasmine,
In shocks of vivid yellow,
Leaps out and streaks
In lurid flares of flagrant disbelief.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The cool dawn
still tendrils damp
on dew cloaked leaf
and humid mist
of the night breath diminishing.
Each and every blade
of the mop flop grass
wears a sparkling jewel
in which the sun quivers
as a white hot fragment.
And the concrete path
mottles transpiring art
in patches of sunshine
scolding from behind
swift passing clouds,
while every vigorous plant
is flushed to upthrust,
called and prompted
by firm osmotic grasp
and fluid’s turgid evaporation.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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