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
He holds the cigarette
With his lip.
As he speaks
It nods its agreement.
In his hand is a beer,
At home
Quite naturally.
An eau de vie lubricant.
In his face is a scowl,
An irritation
As if most things
Were shit
Or, he’s cool
To offer disinterest.
A shrug and a pout
In detachments shout,
Ejected from the self,
Thrown out
And projected
As the very loudest silence.
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
Surf rises
To the mirror lip sun,
A moment before
White thrall,
Loose of integrity
And slack
Of reer-up and shore call,
Pales the deep blue
To a lighter shade.
Near the rocks
Haze moistens the air
With sticky salt
Greasy on every surface
And root grasping trees
Survey the consistent pulse
From high, squinting promontories
Stark against the prevailing horizons
And the sea changing sky.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Beneath the succulent leaves,
In the shadow cast
Where harsh sun
Fragments
To a gentle dappling,
Proboscis flowers
Scent the musty undergrowth
With sweetness derived
From intense concentration.
Like the artist
Who dedicates the hours
To find a pure manifestation,
The flower too
Is single minded
In its delicate craft
And delights in its creation.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Flowers
Like all things
Unwind from their beginnings
Curved by the spin
Of worlds
And helices underlying.
All the earths children
Are so marked
By coriolous force
And inescapable laws
Holding us snug to our place
In time revolving.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & Distilledvoice
O world
Myriad
And so various
How refined
Your ideas
Brought to definition
In the womb of you!
How perfect
The journey of a flower
In generations’ wandering
And expression.
How fitted this now
In which the blossoms
Burgeon at the lip
Of times curvature.
How right the polyps
Of your creation,
Now
And forever
In your name.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
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