Under soft February light
Where warming ethers
Carry earthy scents,
I remember my spring self
Among crocuses.
And yet again my heart is lifted
By the tide turn
Of day-length stretched,
Being motivated
To peep as a myriad
First shoots.
And yet again
The soft spell
Light upon my heart
Shimmers hazy
As sunbeams diffuse
In the mellow heavens,
And I can’t quite tell
If this space myself
Is me or the world
Or just spring’s fluid
Billowing out from itself.
February mizzle wets
The lights
Of snowdrop, crocus
And eager daffodil,
Soothes and lubricates
Their birth
Through soil
Mulched humus rich
And frangranced sweet
With spore’s mycelium.
To think,
Some slander this complexity,
Call it dirt and mud
Overlooking the quantum truth
Of gardeners’ gold,
Both foundation
And sustenance
For all.
Under winter sun
And mist
We leaned close
And kissed,
Remembering each other’s lips
And the fit
Of our embracing bodies.
And for a moment
We shared
The soft movement
Of our hearts combining
As all but our love dissolved.
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 world is dripping
Browns and auburn golds
As russet leaves, untethered
From life’s lunge and thrust
– Summer’s widened light –
Let loose the season’s
Fall, in energy unclasping
The matter made,
As all shrinks away
And narrows toward formlessness.
Autumn flies basking
In the last, late light,
Absorbing the nutrient
Of the sun’s capacity,
Accepting a photons’ score
Of energy,
Recharging in the beneficence
Of a warming and wondrous gift.
The sun my heart
The sun your heart
The sun our shared heart.
But one sun
In whose radiance we bathe,
One heart
In which we ourselves are,
One love
Lifting every being
Into life,
Filling every being
With its light,
Carrying every being
Into the whole of its wholeness.
ⓒBen Truesdale 2020
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
Whilst watering the garden pots
In the stilling dusk
I turn
And look,
Take in an unexpected perspective,
An angle from which I have not perceived,
And suddenly my breath
Is swept from my chest
By the beauty of the rush
Of plants propelled springward
And joyously becoming
Their exponential selves.
And in that gathering moment
My heart swells
For their vividness,
For the life sweet in their being,
For their entwining and wondering reach
Into spaciousness,
And for the bud of a poem
Born on the sap-surge
Of my lip,
And giddy with the prospect of flowering.
ⓒBen Truesdale 2020
I breath in
I breathe out
I feel my lungs full
I feel my lungs empty
I feel the life move in
I feel the life move out
I feel my lungs irrigated
With freshness
New as the spring bathed leaves
Are vivid
Spacious as the spring air
Is light
I breathe in
I breathe out
Life is within me
Life is without
I breathe in
I breathe out
I value the life of my being
I value the presence of my life
I breathe in
I breathe out
Life in its essence is simple
I love the simple essence of life
I breathe in
I breathe out
I am alive in existence
Existence is alive in my life
I breathe in
I breathe out
I breathe in
I breathe out
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