Beside the stream’s
Incessant polishing
Of stones grown
Round and golden
As sun-speckled eggs,
Groves of lush garlic leaf
Cluster to the damp lips
Of the woodland floor
And raise illuminations
To light the meandering path
In its pondering
Through dappling glades
Of newborn leaf
And bluebells
In strewn multiples
And swathes ankle deep.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
O what solar incandescence,
Warm upon the face,
For us to freely take
From source
Diurnal everlasting.
And O what sustenance
In which we bathe
And garner flesh,
So we might glide
Upon the motive wing
High above it all,
Absorbing precious gift
In updrafts,
Light as breath
Of daffodil glowing
In yellow flush expressed.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
A day or two at most
In this floriferous moment,
Where white is defined
In garlands
And upon the breeze
And strewn upon the green.
The garden in pale fresh notes,
Hardly even a thing
Before altered
And borne away
Upon the wind filled clouds
Searching in the blueness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The cool dawn
still tendrils damp
on dew cloaked leaf
and humid mist
of the night breath diminishing.
Each and every blade
of the mop flop grass
wears a sparkling jewel
in which the sun quivers
as a white hot fragment.
And the concrete path
mottles transpiring art
in patches of sunshine
scolding from behind
swift passing clouds,
while every vigorous plant
is flushed to upthrust,
called and prompted
by firm osmotic grasp
and fluid’s turgid evaporation.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
So creeps the frond
Of delicate, intricate life.
Architectural feather forms
Crystallising from mystery,
Enlivened by light inspired
In realness inhabited.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The finches and dawn tits
Make an avenue of the gardens,
Traversing boundary and fence
As if they weren’t hurdles
But opportunity along the way.
Each March they make their highway here,
Gathering seeds from spent winter stems.
And from pods, crisp in bunches, they cling,
Feeding as if the wait were over
And the joyous work of spring begun.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Gnats rise
To their dusk dance:
Life in transient, delicate form
Upon the stillness of mist
Dewing in the blue
Of copse and dell’s hollow.
An echo of the spring warmth
That touched the ground
And energised
The display upon the dim edges
Of the nearing night,
Bringing lives
To delicacies and finesse
With hardly a wingbeat
To keep them buoyant
And borne on sunlight’s shadow.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
With March pleasant in the air
My gardener’s fingers
Find soil smudge
In their ready tips.
And the light footed heart
Of daffodil magic
And sunshine breath
Skips like lambs
To the work of seeds
Pregnant in their trays.
And I think:
On days like these
It’s not only the lungs that breathe
But the skin
And the brain
And the body,
And I feel that with the mellow rays
Of springtime in the bird’s announcing,
Man really could be
True husband to the world
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The pure thought
In blossoms open
Upon the branch
Nothing but this
In blue sky and air
As fresh as newness birthed.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The incomprehensible bud
Unsheathed of winter,
Awaits
Unbelievable expansion
In to the living myth of spring.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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