Magus

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

Avenue Of Finches

The finches and dawn tits
Make an avenue of the gardens,
Traversing boundary and fence
As if they weren’t hurdles
But opportunity along the way.

Each March they make their highway here,
Gathering seeds from spent winter stems.
And from pods, crisp in bunches, they cling,
Feeding as if the wait were over
And the joyous work of spring begun.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Gnats Rise

Gnats rise
To their dusk dance:
Life in transient, delicate form
Upon the stillness of mist
Dewing in the blue
Of copse and dell’s hollow.
An echo of the spring warmth
That touched the ground
And energised
The display upon the dim edges
Of the nearing night,
Bringing lives
To delicacies and finesse
With hardly a wingbeat
To keep them buoyant
And borne on sunlight’s shadow.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Husband

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With March pleasant in the air
My gardener’s fingers
Find soil smudge
In their ready tips.

And the light footed heart
Of daffodil magic
And sunshine breath
Skips like lambs

To the work of seeds
Pregnant in their trays.
And I think:
On days like these

It’s not only the lungs that breathe
But the skin
And the brain
And the body,

And I feel that with the mellow rays
Of springtime in the bird’s announcing,
Man really could be
True husband to the world

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Arboretum In Every Garden

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In a parallel world,
Much like our own,
The mark of a man’s success
And achievement is measured
By the number and age
Of mature trees he gladly tends
In his garden.

In this parallel world
All men are servants
And nothing is out of balance.

 

copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice

Intense Concentration

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Beneath the succulent leaves,
In the shadow cast
Where harsh sun
Fragments
To a gentle dappling,
Proboscis flowers
Scent the musty undergrowth
With sweetness derived
From intense concentration.
Like the artist
Who dedicates the hours
To find a pure manifestation,
The flower too
Is single minded
In its delicate craft
And delights in its creation.

copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice

Coriolous

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Flowers
Like all things
Unwind from their beginnings
Curved by the spin
Of worlds
And helices underlying.

All the earths children
Are so marked
By coriolous force
And inescapable laws
Holding us snug to our place
In time revolving.

 

Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & Distilledvoice

Evolution God

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O world
Myriad
And so various
How refined
Your ideas
Brought to definition
In the womb of you!
How perfect
The journey of a flower
In generations’ wandering
And expression.
How fitted this now
In which the blossoms
Burgeon at the lip
Of times curvature.
How right the polyps
Of your creation,
Now
And forever
In your name.

 

Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice

 

Winter Rose

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From the ragged beauty
Of the season,
Genetics speculate
A hope
In rose flower,
Half crippled,
Half pert lip
Of summer love,
Sent to test
The possibility
Of love’s emergence
And early awakening
To the surge of imminent spring.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015