Lavender,
In silvery swathes
Of purple spires,
Marks midsummer
With every scented
Brush-past.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
garden
In The Summer Dusk
In the summer dusk
all is sweet temptation
in musk of earthy being:
even the grass
is dew sugar first hay,
tender and sun soaked elixir
to horsly kind,
frolicsome and effervescent
to pink noses everywhere.
And what air: warm as comfort,
barefooted and shirt undone,
base note to the roses flood
of velvet, lusty tantalisation:
a shedding of potions loving
and daintily perfumed.
What dwells in this scented night,
but creatures of the stillness,
hid deep from our slice of daily life,
nocturnal to it
and waking only to the moon
and sweetness magic from
disgorging night-flowers.
A hedgehog snuffles and is alive.
Moths are vibrant,
aerialed to the pheromonal moon
and unseen currents high and trail like.
And beetles alight the moonbeams,
unfurl their hidden wings
and step to the unsteady air,
to taste and be beside
the molecules abundant.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Sexual Significance
Fronds of coraline and sweet,
Tender wands disseminating
Flume flower and myth
And decadence:
The flush festooned,
Plush push
Of sap transformed
To nectar’s heady
Significance of sex
And desirous fertility
Expressed in petal perfect
Symmetry and wantonness.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
Spheres Of Being
This poem was inspired by a photo by Steven Schwartzman.
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com
As if
We needed more proof
Than this
For worldly significance
Of the microcosm
In the macrocosm
And the fractal maps
That return again
And yet again
To the shapes in our eyes.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
In The Rose
Nose first
And all the body
Thrust after it,
For I go
Gladly to the rose’s
Soft flesh,
Plunge myself within
To be enveloped
Wholly in petal silk
And scents of dreams,
Sweet as the loveliest
Material or lovers skin
Impregnated with sunshine,
Fine nectars, oils and essences.
For a moment I am lost,
Dipped as I am
In relaxation
Of all but the only sense in the world:
The pure thing found
In candied whorl
Of the rose’s
Delicate unwind
And fragrant shimmering.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Wild Garlic
In the cool
Beneath the dappling,
Groves of wild garlic
Grow lush:
Flowers thrust
To the damp and shadow
As wanton spires
Of creamy white petal
And green, sweet scent
Speak of soil, rich
With root bound nutrient
Of the earth found hollow.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Divinity
Not in the stone
Or the frame of the flowers,
Not in the lawn or the trees
Or the generous borders.
Only in the eye
Who perceives,
The I
Who perceives.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
In The Garden Of Rooms
One enters through a gate in an old stone wall. There is a peaceful lawn surrounded by herbaceous boarders leaning against wisteria capped, flint studded masonry. Clematis crowns in places: in pinks and white cataracts and green, gushing falls. Shrubs flower in every corner. Great blowsy peonies glimpse from their folds and white finery. Bluebells peep from the underworld and ferns cling to high crevices. At the far end of the sky ceilinged room is an opening in the brickwork. One enters via stepping stones tattooed with the slow engravings of lichens.
In the next room the light is altered and flowers are blue and purple in hue and temperament. Scents are heavy and cool. An archway of twisted and gnarled wood is split by the epoch of vine held flowers: fists unclenched and offering nectars on tiny, fleshy instruments: stamens, pollen clad and bumbled at by the benediction of bees.
In the next room there is the deep scent of peace held in a nook and grotto of silence. More are the plant beings. More is the air and humming of insects in nectarous impulse.
In the next there is a goddess of love who owns the still moment and offers more to those who dally in the mood of her wishes.
In the next there are doorways to secrets, and paths to hidden worlds and spaces clean as streams born new from bubbling wellsprings.
In the next there are deeper things for the mind to fathom.
In the next there is the heart of the world and a fountain to which the lips might sip life’s generous bequeathment and know yet more doorways to the fragrant beyond.
In the next room…….
And in the next…….
Equality
Whether tended rose, vine
Or weed in bramble entanglement
We yearn the same dream:
And equal upon the earth
Take sustenance
In sunshine on the cheek,
Leaf or flowering petal.
We are the same in love
And level in our needs.
We are not different in our beings
Or our brotherhood.
We are one under the sun
And one in our differing.
We are together in our reach
For the sky blue expansion
Of life’s meaning.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Mid May Fragrance
Mid May cow parsley
Dematerialises in the lightest points
Of its flowers,
Alters reality with Hubris cologne,
Reaches with molecules:
Heaps and loads
The air
With sex,
Sweetens and fills
Sweetens and fills,
Purfumes to intoxicated mix
Of heady, pungent scentliness.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
distilledvoice 