Majesty

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Cold as condensing night
Shadows permit
The dew plump air
Burden’s respite
In perfect spheres
Scattered release
On every magnified
Leaf top, crevice and edge
So the garden is justly jewelled
And each strand or stalk
Or equal cobweb,
Gilded silver light,
Is for a moment
Raised from damp
-To king-
And robed in crested finery
And majestic, sparkling transience.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Autumn Scent

Now
With reluctant light
The wet earth
Breathes at last,
Breaks its dry fast
And puts
The eager tendril
Of must and spore rot,
Conveyed in shadow-damp,
To the dismantlement.
For what falls –
The withered leaf,
The stem, no longer turgid,
The petals browning,
– Mould will impregnate
And make an earthly scent
In season rich lament
And sad fermentation
Of soil and soul bound things
Untethered and unfettered
In their sinking sleep
And matters cool release
From forms previous.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

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

In A Patch Of Stone Walled Field

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In a tumbledown landscape
Above the sea,
Olive trees flutter silver green
In patches of thin earth
And scattered stone,
Scraped into a rough field.
Over the wall
A hobby of a vineyard,
Draws deep-root thirsty
For its plump infants
Suckling on the vine,
And the sun
Polishes them
To succulence
And sweet raisin wine.
And in the fallen down next,
Fennel grows rampant
And unkempt
Spicing with heady aniseed.
And in the shabby next
There is lavender on the wind
Emollient with herbaceous strands,
Mixing freely
With the airborne personality
Of wild thyme
And the pheromonal
Purple flowers of rosemary.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015