There is no air sweeter
Than in May’s cascade
Of colour, billowing
With purple ether
And the lightest elements
That plants might contrive.
Their sexual expression
In fragrant perfection
And tiers of pale lilac
Flowers given
Is the real ‘who’
Of who they really are.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
In a room filled with light
I would find my art
In the murmurings
Of my feelings
Introspect and widening.
I would take the time, and with it
Fashion a beautiful gift, spin the light
To fabricate a tapestry of seeing, in which I
Might gaze and find things as yet
Unformed in my understanding.
There would be so much light
And so much time. And my looking
Would both absorb and bring forth
The art of my living. I would live to the
Fullest I could live, happy in the dream
Of ever finding.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
To the garden I go,
To pace the concrete path
Bordered by greenery.
I examine the bud, then the tender
Shoot delicate in its unfold, changing
Each day imesaursbly. I witness the
Plant beings flush under the sun, their
Greenness quivering, their buoyancy
Mesmerised to reach for the high
Happy sky.
I step away for but a spell and to my
Returning astonishment I find a new
Garden, in place of the wonder I had
Left, yet more richly itself and bolder
In its expansive space.
The air too I breathe and find thankful
To my lungs, for the garden’s world is
Richly textual, a sensation in to which
I too unfold, as if all my wanting
Dreams of elsewhere heavens had
Been called home and yoked to the
Simple matter of a flower’s beautiful
Event.
Someone, a time ago, painted a
picture in the living stream of garden
beings. Their beautiful idea, via seed
and years of seasons, and the tender
touch of gardeners’, comes to me as
this:
A flush of crimson azalea.
And there a grotto in which generous
rhododendron blush and bloom in
roughs and frills.
And there peonies unclasped.
And there cherry pinks and white
petals lazily falling.
And there a dappled garden of
magnolia, like so many flamingos,
proud swans and poised egrets alight
each bough and branch.
And beneath in clusters: fritillary,
anemone and daffodils.
As if all were floating on a magical
mist of sunrise beginnings and first
dew drop breaths of times absolute
unfolding newness.
If I were an artist I might use this
fertile gift and call good thoughts
from fresh enriched wholesomeness
and wish them forward, so in a time
ahead, someone might find what I
have found and be likewise captive
and spellbound by nature’s gladness
to willingly adhere to the picture’s trellis.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Crouching in rock gardens,
Among the hardy flowers
Strummed by the sky’s wide wind,
She finds her perfect moment
And is moved to art,
As if the moment had found her
To carry out its wish
To live beyond its simple richness:
Live once in being witnessed
And then again and again
In the paint’s still vivid kiss.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
An overflowing bin blazoned
with a colourful advert,
an up turned ice cream cone
on a clipped lawn,
slabs of concrete paving,
a cast iron fence with shrubs
overflowing and intertwined,
a vine creeping over and on,
bushes expanding,
a row of mature Scots pine
red against the skyline,
the brooding clouds, plump
and heavy eyed, sullen
with imminent rain,
fleeting blue between, high
and shifting.
A gull rides the buffeting
and for a moment glows white as
gold with the touch of the five o’clock
sun gilding is wing tips
then drops away, plummets to
nothing
leaves only
a cold burnt image
indelible on the retinal sky
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
It is good because it offers only the witnessing. It sees something beautiful and sees it. And like the soul, passively observes with no thought beyond to control or complicate. It seeks nothing from you but offers wholly its world.
There is its simple purity. It speaks without words. It does not tell.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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