life

September Spider

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Somehow they are flowers too,
Plump and central
To their strands
And gossamer petals.
Bodies worked at
And made in secret
Through the summer months
Among loam and beneath leaf,
Until the garden
Grown golden and fruitful,
Leaves crinkled
With the sum of age,
Boasts beasts
Materialised to the cradle
Between stems:
Their worldly wears
And accumulation manifest,
Their nets
Set to the bountiful breeze,
Their fingertips poised
For the flower forms of insects
Borne on sunshine
And wingbeats.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Sunset

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Sun skinned
Boys
Delight
In the day’s final hour,
Frolicking on the jetty
And blue beside,
Wrestling each other,
Daring, jumping in and out,
Diving from the rocks,
Shouting language
From their boisterous mouths:
Dipping their matte skin
In Mediterranean
And coming out
Anointed in the gold
Of liquid
Painted by
By the sun’s
Last moment.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Beachcomber

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His is the barefooted
Sand grain press
And cushion, cool toes
In the lapping edge.

And where brine falls away
He looks
To find treasures
Brought on tide

And by the sea’s means,
Things cast high
And left bleached.
His is the measure

Of time in waves,
Regular draw
And curl forward,
And again

The pulse
Of far ocean
Felt in an oscillation.
And through the night

His ears
Hear the surf clap
And crash
In white frothing excitation

Yet his eyes
Are to the black sky,
Spattered in constellation
And celestial bodies

Glimmering as the
Phosphorescent beings
That light
The universal sea

At his toe tip reach
And in the fluid ocean,
And in the intertidal furls
In which he lives:

The light years he perceives
So close
He can nearly
Touch them.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Delight

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Delight in liquid sea-green,
Washing pebbles
In transparent equality.
Solvent clear as air

And cool
To bathe the blood
And salve the sun,
Hot on the body.

Perhaps a metaphor
For transition
To other energy:
The ever blue

When we
Were nothing
In the seamless
Beginnings

When freedom
Was our own,
As was
Fluent, weightless buoyancy.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Highlights

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She has highlights in her hair,
The butter kiss
Of summer light
And fragrant breeze
Painted there.

But it’s her thoughts
That wear
The gold
Of lifted mood
And tussle
Beautiful

In halcyon
Of lofty space
And blue sky
Incantation,
Where shine
Is gloss
Upon the body

And soul
Is spirit
Reaching through matter.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Pottering In Identity

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He strolls
Among his trees,
Pushing the barrow
Before him:
Work neither heavy
Nor light
But on the balance
Of his good shoulders
And measured
Equal to the pace
Of an afternoon
With wind
Constant in the pines
And sunshine
Inching the hours,
Shadows dialling
The length of the day.
There is deep satisfaction
In knowing his land:
The microclimate at the far end
Where a puddle makes a winter stream.
The row of oak
Marking the boundary
Is no less his own,
Nor the gentle slope
Not other
Than his home.
There is something primal
In his ownership,
A regal spirit
Felt deep in his guts
And through the soles
Of his feet,
An energy felt
As though the ground
Itself could speak
And claim
The man,
Just as the man
Claims the land
As his identity.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015