In the crepuscular hour
When receding day
And encroaching night
Meet at the apex of magic,
All the white flowers
Are filled luminescent
So they appear to glow
Beyond themselves
Like vivid stars
Floating moon bright
In the gloom of dusk possibility.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
I walk in to the garden
A man
In clothing and footsteps
And thought
And then as the banks
Of perennial leaf
Touch my check,
Reach to meet
My enquiring hand,
And as my eye,
Like foraging bee
Dips and inspects,
And my ears,
Drawn to perceive
The wood pigeons
Breathing symphonies.
And as my nose
Catches strands
Of scent upon the breeze,
I change
From the modern, disinterested man
To the lover
Of my brother the leaf
And my friends
The birds and insects,
Quick-winged under foliage
And shadow
And proud to own the branch
And scrump the flower heads.
And thus I become
The green thing,
Half man, half herb,
Wishing for the heady scents
Of earthen loam
And soil must
And coolness of the mother,
Where the flesh of my heart
Might be lain in a hollow
To absorb the deep nutrient
And feel the root of forever.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
To the dusk
Flowers put their moods
In scented wafts
On which the eyes might close,
Deferring to the only open sense
Of the tantalised nose,
In which such enrichment
Is found in sweet distillate
Of earth and loam:
The mind somehow
Washed in perfumed sherbet,
Cleaned by something
Made perfect,
Alerted to the essential element
Volatile under the mid summer moon.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
We set out as kids
On summer days,
Rummaging through
The undergrowth
Beneath sycamore and elder,
With mists of cow parsley
In the balance of our eyes
And swathes neck deep
On every side.
We were explores
Cutting the pungent stems
With machetes made from sticks
And the magic designed
In childhood minds,
Mapping uncharted banks
And the untended nooks
Behind garages,
Where cut grass
Disgorged from the garden’s arse
Sweated in heaps,
And old bikes
Were colonised
By wild grass
That rustled as we pushed by
On days that ranged so broad
We couldn’t perceive their endings.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
A blackbird hidden
Among the high branches
Whittles a song
With the tool
Of its tongue
And sculpts
The undisciplined air
To the fine art
Of a tune,
Whistled and warbled
And finally returned
By the breath
Conveying the voice,
Beautifully transformed.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Wood pigeons
And the soft-throated dove
Strum the hollow harp,
Cooing summer lullabies
Of love and sunshine
And offering
From feather-puffed breast,
A purring resonance
Put to the warm breeze
Replete with lawn mower whirrings
And the sweet green scents
Of grass, newly cut.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Around the white lilac bloom
Two white butterflies flirt
In spiral mirror images,
As if they were once
The petals on which
They now alight,
Revisiting for but the briefest instant
Of memory past
Before once again
Gambolling on updrafts
And the gentlest touches
Of wingtip flutterings
In the dance of butterfly love.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In one corner of the globe
The terrorists enforce
Their monoculture of thought,
While we in the free west
Subjugate the wilderness
And extort only the soil.
In both, the species diminish
As control devours
The slightest difference
And allows only
The one persistent idea:
That diversity must perish.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
A mood of flowers
Blooms upon the village
As if an agreement
Had been drafted
Between last years seeds
And every verge
Offering to couch botanic.
And ever crevice
Containing a crumb of soil
Or even a puff of dust
Lends its dampness
To root indulgence florid,
Borrowing mid-day heat
Radiated from old stone walls.
And the gardens?
Well, they have burst their borders
And splurged to soften
The corners of the village
With lilac drifts
And wisteria trained to show
The fullness of a May day.
And iris tongues
Loll and flounce
And poppies are prominent
Atop the walls,
And all the other
Bells and beauties
Claim the air with scent
And the space
With perennial buttresses
Of stalks and spikes
And overarching species,
Daubing brickwork
With exuberant flourishes
Like the flair of the artist’s mood.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Unfurling ferns –
Undone by the light
Or the moisture
Touching the root
Or by cue unfathomed
But by the mind of the plant
– Reach out
For expansion’s
Many multiples.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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