photograph

The Blazing Heart

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

Perhaps you forgot

The searing light,

Buried it

In low-mood thoughts

And reason

As heavy as chains.

–

Oh, yes, you say,

Give me the nicotine of thought

And worldly misadventure.

Let me overlook my overlooking,

Let me ignore my ignorance

And dwell outside myself

In a swirl of worries,

While the light is left unacknowledged.

–

Instead,

Remember, not the cold intellectual light

And the optics of the brain,

But the warm body of love

Inside yourself.

–

Remember the needless state

Where the heart floats

On ethers,

And worries are nothings,

Neither fears, nor even yours.

–

Remember the you

Before the you

Who carried the weight of living,

The unfettered you

Buoyant and watching,

Alive in the now

From which all springs forth.

–

Remember the sun of love

Blazing in your heart,

Remember remembering,

And the knowing

That the heart has always, always burned,

Is never dulled

And will never ever grow dark.

The Looking Of You

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There is a looking,

A looking into yourself

Where the eyes

Become ever wide.

Ever and ever wider

Grows seeing

As though astonishment

Were limitless,

And what the self is

Is no less

Than all.

And yet there is greater seeing

And wider eyes,

As astonishment

Is refreshed with each

Step into yourself,

Each looking wider still,

Seeing drawn into

An infinite expansion

Into seeing itself.

Ever wider sees the I

Behind the eyes,

Ever wider

Becomes the I.

The Fluid Of The Air

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There were downpours last night,

The patter of swollen drops

On leaves and the absorbent earth.

The guttering dripped intermittently

And sung me back to sleep.

This morning, when I step outside,

The garden accepts me

Inside itself,

Merges me wholly

With the rain-heavy air,

Easy on the breath

And dampening like a sodden blanket.

Bird calls are shrill in the moistness

As if the lubricated air

Conveyed sound more easily.

The separation between things

Is altered and healed

As though my senses,

Conducted by the closeness of molecules,

Reach far beyond

What I might call the body.

Where once there was dry air, the sky,

And things existing in it,

Now there is one fluid medium

Where all things touch.

The boundaries of bark and stem,

Feathered skin or the insects chitinous

Exoskeleton are as porous

As the canopy of the overarching tree.

And the osmosis between

Is a luxuriant movement,

Energy’s transient enquiry,

Unconcerned by the names of things

And free to pass between,

Free to roam

A borderless and singular being.

While The Sun Set

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While the sun set

Our thoughts got caught

In the sticky thorns

Of the news

And we all remarked

On how terrible it was.

–

And as the sky became redder

And wider and filled

With darting bugs,

Feasting bats upon the wing,

We said it was a travesty.

–

And when the moon,

A slither in the vastness

Of horizons broad as beginnings,

Slipped from behind an effortless cloud,

We continued with our worrying stories.

–

And at last, with but a pale glimmer

At the most western face of the day,

The final moment

When night was not yet night

And day still held sway,

We woke up,

Realised everything was alright

And that life was in fact joyous.

A Dove Coos

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A dove coos

In the the bell tower,

Soft and throaty

And warm

For the chicks

Loved in to the nest.

–

The Scots pine,

Lofty in the graveyard,

Stands still and magnificent

Exuding presence,

Shining with silence

And oblivious of time.

–

The woodland,

Dotted with ewes

And skewed graves stones

Chatters

In warble and whistle.

In the canopy

Birds flap and flutter unseen.

May Rain

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The sky breathes

Moist upon the land,

Kisses the newness

Of just-unfurled leaves,

Liquefying the air

Until dew drop and rain drop

Dampen tree bark

With dark mottled absorbency,

And the haze of cow parsley

Scents the sky’s earthward reach

With its Milky Way.

Shriller and lubricated,

Bird call conducted

Through the denser fluid,

Cuts the sweet cloak

Of draping mist,

Amplified inside

The descended cloud,

Defined by its weight

And closeness.

And from the delicate canopy,

Born in perfect verdancy,

Coalesced drops patter,

Splatting loose and percussive

Upon fresh nettle leaves

Yearning for light.

Photographer

~ distilledvoice ~ 4 Comments

In the moistened autumn air

Morning time is late,

Shuffling from the lengthening night

Through swathes of disintegrating leaves

Let loose the life that gripped

So urgent and productive

To branches now revealed.






Rooks craw in skeletal beech





Where only a smattering of bronze





Tenacious leaf, still reluctant





In the wind, cling jewel-like





And fluttering. And other birds





Pick at the glut of berries





With the needle of their song.










Somewhere in this,





Where the sky morphs





And reveals and holds





The whole landscape,





Walks the photographer,





Drinking in the all that he perceives,





Almost convulsing





With each perspective seen,





Almost pained by the utter beauty





Unfolding in fleeting perfections,





That even if time were his to own,





He could never hope to capture.






			

	


				
					


				
					


				
					


	

			
The Sky Is Blue
		

				

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The sky is blue





And deep





And impenetrable,





Absorbing my gaze





Which finds no purchase





In its azure nothingness,





Finds nothing





But lazuline, cerulean flawless flatness,





In which the cumulous materialise,





Condense in forever morphing forms;





There in expansion or contraction





Wispiness or burdensome bruising





Clotting before rain drops are birthed,





Or reconsidered by the air’s





Subtle hold, and withdrawn





Into the invisibility of blueness





And the dimensionless constant





Reaching beyond the reaching mind.










ⓒBen Truesdale f2020