With a face from the front cover of the National Geographic the old man carries the burden of paddy baskets with entrepreneurial spirit, balancing his load for each photographer and grinning with a toothy and well practised smile. More than anyone else, he knows the value of authenticity and clucks eagerly for the next shutter click to capture his own in the stillness of film.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Half a boat
Long ago dragged
To moulder on the tide line,
Relaxes in splinters
Shed like bark.
One day
They’ll be but bevelled plank
Jutting from the sand
And a fibrous thought
Left in the memory
Or perhaps
Another wreck
Lent sideways
And slack upon its keel,
Fading in the inevitable time.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
In the geometry
Of blue horizons
And skirting beach
I find a boat
Paint peeling
And silvery
In the coral sand.
In the end
All things bleach:
The wooden seat,
The coral shingle,
The old man
Whose facial stubble
Grows white
As the particulate
He stands upon.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
From the sand
Sprout tubular mangrove,
Dusty and leaf stripped
To the bare essential frame.
An idle bike, left to the sand’s Abrasion somehow mirrors their
Natural form, as if all were equal
Within the shade, beneath the sun.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Over most the world
She cascades,
Ever and always
Downward she falls,
And yet sometimes
In her ramblings she climbs,
With rings on every single finger
And butterflies in dreams,
Settling as momentary flowers
And garlands lifted beyond.
O she’s beautiful in her fringes
And ethereal reaches,
Beautiful in her bow
And salutation to the sun.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
My father used to recount
The story of a green flash
Seen at sea when the
Sun slipped below the horizon.
As I watch the sun set
I find his story on my lips,
As though the flash were imprinted
As surely as if I’d seen it myself.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
They could be beings
Stepping from the light,
Holidaying where their world
Is burned on the beach
And paved upon the water
Like an avenue
To the sun’s blinding portal.
They could be water nymphs
Drawn by the pathway
Polished on the boundary
Between aqueous
And the air’s
More transient mix.
They could be boys
Doused in gold,
In sheen of salt water sweat
And light guilded fringes,
Frolicking in shimmering skins,
Oiled to perfect
Frictionless cartwheels
Found in the fluid
Of each childish leap
And featureless silhouette.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
We spent the last hours
Bent to the sand
Sifting the tide line
For tiny shells.
In among the bleached fragments
We found cowries, green stones
And purple coral. The sun
Was hot on our backs
But when it fell behind the rock
Promontory we didn’t notice,
Our fingers busy like the feathery Mandibles of wary crabs.
Afterwards we went to the bar
Perched on the headland
And looked out over the vast water,
Absorbing the orangey light
That changed as we thought
Our long thoughts and took
Photographs of the magic
As it diminished in the far away night.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
There is a moment
Between the days strength
And night arriving
When the trickle of light
Almost ceased,
Stills
At the balance point
Between phases.
And there
We come close
To time’s demise:
The essential end
And the very beginning,
Like two delicate eggs
Nestled in the hand
Holding the quiet duality
Of a thing in limbo:
Being not one
Or other
But both
And neither.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Every holiday snap
Is a slap
Right across your face,
Dear reader, watcher, liker,
Cos I’m the smug vacation maker
Whose wall you’ve reluctantly
Signed to yours.
And if you were here
I’d bore you to tears
But as you’re not
I’ll just smack you across the chops
With how lovely a time
I’m having
Under the smug sun
Next to the smug water
In the smug dream
That stinks
Of all the self importance
I could manageably conjure.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
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