The stream breathes
Cool and damp
To the foliage hues,
Moist to the hollow
And bank,
And Shadowed
By the lateness of the hour.
Only in a patch
Of borrowed light
Do poplars glow
Golden on every leaf,
Their high thoughts fluttering
In the low angle sun.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Miasma condenses
Heavy blue
In the brooding
Underbellies
As if the cauldron
Were full
At a point of boiling
And might only ease
In manifestation
Of tearful rain
And reservoir’s
Releasing cascade.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
When it wakes
It hears the flowers
Call in scents.
It desires
The ultra violet
Of colours
And the deep
Well of love
In which nectar pools
And collects.
When it wakes
It thinks of nothing else
But the warmth on the wing
And the burrowing head
Thoughtless in the dream
Of pollinating.
When it wakes
It be itself
And thinks
Not a thought
Outside of its being.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The thought of the flower,
Though unripe
Cannot be held back,
For the surge
Of magic
Invisibly
Pushes
And reaches
And strives
To be
Inexorably
And irrepressibly
Expressed.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
First scents of autumn
Reach
From the must loam,
Impregnate the misty morn
With brown crinkled signs
And fruit
Slack and ready
For plucking.
The vigour of pale youth
Was a lifetime
Under the high sun.
Now the third season
Ripens and plumps,
Relaxes the stiffness
Of purpose
And loosens
To fermenting nap and doze
As the day shortens
And the leaves
Age to crispness,
While wasps fly drunk
On the sweet juice
Of fruit fall
And the billowing glut
To come.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
So slowly
Yet the years pass by
And old roads
Enveloped
By the seasons fruit
And fallen leaves
Brought down
To the carpeting ground
Are each year
Millimetres closer
To the countryside,
As new formed earth,
Like age rings
Of the tree,
Mark the cycle
By their regular encroachment.
It is thus
That our histories
Are buried.
And time is immeasurable
As it flows
Sometimes slowly
And other times
Like a swift tide,
Our ancestors
Sunk in the mud
Of generations,
As the millimetres
Have built
To the platform
On which
Life now resides
And finds us alive,
Upon the skin
Of now happening
But with deep roots
Drawing and sucking
On the layered sediments
Of history
And all those
Dead ideas.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The air is moist
And humid heavy
But fresh
With new rain,
Still dampening down
Still weighing
Each leaf droopy,
Each bended stalk
Gravity bound.
Some flower heads
Are dew drunk
Lively, plush
And open eyed,
As perfect
As purity
In droplet spheres
Expressed
Upon the petals body.
But some are dashed
To autumnal fall:
The rose
Shaggy on its swollen hip,
Curling
And fading tears
Scattered in the falling.
It’s as if
The night could
Reach beyond
It’s dark boundary:
Wet finger tips
Invading the day
Or morning, at least:
Its species
Conveyed in fluid:
The slugs
The snails
Putting down
Their silver trails
For the sun’s
Open touch
And glitter
In awakening.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The heart burns
With molten love
Disintegrates
All matters arising.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Sometimes
He is broad as thicket
Or enclave copse.
Sometimes
He is thin and sparse,
With but an eyebrow’s tuft
Skirting the field boundary.
Sometimes
He is lone bramble
Upon a flat plain.
But always,
Wherever he rests
He is tangle
And vegetal mess
Of thorn ramble
And nettle,
Dry stick and twine
Woven to nest
By birds
Who feel the home
In his charity.
If he had friend
In the human field
He’d call scarecrow
Brother,
For he too is silent
And watchful,
And made
with a bundle
Of dry stems
Plumping the body
Of his jacket.
But still he is beautiful
Though he is ragged:
For in April
He is delicate
With hawthorn
And blackthorn bloom.
And in June
His foxglove reach
Invites bees
To a hundred purple gullets.
And wild honeysuckle
Are his delicate hands
And the pale instruments
Of his fingertips.
And upon his brow
Are white elder crowns,
Sunward seeking
And scented.
In September
He is ripe and juicy
With the blood of elderberries
And the pert invitation
Of blackberries strung
Like necklaces,
Many and fruitful.
And crab apples,
Hard as stones
Grow gnarled
While sloes
And wild plums
Are succulent on every
Loaded bough
And branches’ reverent bow.
And always
At his feet
Are the rustling species,
Snuffling and foraging
The dry shadows:
The timid shrews,
The field mice twitching,
The hedgehog unfurled
And fearless
And the Badgers
Trotting pathways:
All these
His tender friends
And tenants
To the openness
Of his limbs,
Gathered snug
To his rosehip chest
And the leafy beneficence
Of his embrace,
Herbaceous and enveloping.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
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
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