He puffs on a cigarette
In the manner
Of the ancients
And the Native American
Smoking a peace pipe
And thus inhales
Only pure divinity.
Watching,
The one who disapproves
Inhales the self made smoke
Of an acrid thought
And breathes pure air
Laced with the power
Of negativity.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The blue earth
Hints
At curvature
Where horizon
Mists
To a dreaming
Faraway thought.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Masterpieces
Lie about the house,
Unlocked
And in pieces,
Still prototypes
And foetuses,
Body parts
Without the spark
To impregnate
The seer
And bring them
To the birth
Of the clear
And pure
Idea.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
His is the barefooted
Sand grain press
And cushion, cool toes
In the lapping edge.
And where brine falls away
He looks
To find treasures
Brought on tide
And by the sea’s means,
Things cast high
And left bleached.
His is the measure
Of time in waves,
Regular draw
And curl forward,
And again
The pulse
Of far ocean
Felt in an oscillation.
And through the night
His ears
Hear the surf clap
And crash
In white frothing excitation
Yet his eyes
Are to the black sky,
Spattered in constellation
And celestial bodies
Glimmering as the
Phosphorescent beings
That light
The universal sea
At his toe tip reach
And in the fluid ocean,
And in the intertidal furls
In which he lives:
The light years he perceives
So close
He can nearly
Touch them.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Delight in liquid sea-green,
Washing pebbles
In transparent equality.
Solvent clear as air
And cool
To bathe the blood
And salve the sun,
Hot on the body.
Perhaps a metaphor
For transition
To other energy:
The ever blue
When we
Were nothing
In the seamless
Beginnings
When freedom
Was our own,
As was
Fluent, weightless buoyancy.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
As if
The sea
Had constructed it
With surge
That brought the plank,
The net,
The wave rotted rope,
Tattered and thready
And bone white
From the salt sun:
A pile
High on the tide line
As stark and dry
As the loose feathers
And rounded drift wood
And the seaweed
Crisp as rind:
Debris ground by wave
On the pebble beach,
Burned and bleached
By elements
Constant rotation
And then so loosely arranged
By calloused
And fishline hands,
Ruddy and sun shanked
And work worn
To a soft disintegration.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
In free form hexagons
Light finds
The beveled edge
Of momentary lenses,
Manifested
And then disintegrated
In the next
Ripple movement
Of the fluid wave.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Beyond the trees
In the blue reach
Across the strait,
To the jutting promontory
And the rise
Of distant mountains
We find only half the story
For the near pines exude
Pungent alkaloid sap
And the ratchets
Of cicadas
Percuss in the needle canopy,
And the air
Holds the salt sweat
Of a seaborne breeze
And the moist weight
Of ozone’s far flung memory.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Fruiting bodies
Like fleshy fingers
Examining the other world,
Of air and light.
And beneath
In the thready net,
Mycelium reach
Through the body
Of the earth
Drawing nutrient
From the discarded clothes
Of everything
Let loose
And shed.
The raw components
Once more
Spent
In transition
Of beneficence
Reinvigorated.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The stream breathes
Cool and damp
To the foliage hues,
Moist to the hollow
And bank,
And Shadowed
By the lateness of the hour.
Only in a patch
Of borrowed light
Do poplars glow
Golden on every leaf,
Their high thoughts fluttering
In the low angle sun.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
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