poems

The Gardener’s Art

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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He is brother to the painter
Though uses the green fingered touch
As brush stroke.
And his painting is pure transience
For no sooner
Has his intention
Made it to the page
Than the mother has her say
And brings her children
To cherished approximation,
No less perfect
Than the vision thought,
Imagined and sought
With the soil smudged hands.

And always the picture moves:
With bees sometimes
And sweet breezes
And lush imperceptible growth,
And butterflies on hot days
And of course
The season’s invariable work.

And each year
The page is pre-set
With innumerable ideas
But also blank for new,
And arrives as if it were the first
And not cyclic progeny
Of all time’s happenings
Manifesting in blooms
Among the foliage,
Provocative and colour flecked.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Particles Of Life

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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In the evening
Bugs like particles
Fill the space
Between the trees.
They arrive to my eyes
Flitting entropy
Across shadow,
Carrying specs
Of light apparent,
Moving like tiny
Free reaching pieces
Of the hot sun
Setting in the west.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Crepuscular Hour

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

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In the crepuscular hour
When receding day
And encroaching night
Meet at the apex of magic,
All the white flowers
Are filled luminescent
So they appear to glow
Beyond themselves
Like vivid stars
Floating moon bright
In the gloom of dusk possibility.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Mood Of Flowers

~ distilledvoice ~ 3 Comments

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A mood of flowers
Blooms upon the village
As if an agreement
Had been drafted
Between last years seeds
And every verge
Offering to couch botanic.
And ever crevice
Containing a crumb of soil
Or even a puff of dust
Lends its dampness
To root indulgence florid,
Borrowing mid-day heat
Radiated from old stone walls.

And the gardens?
Well, they have burst their borders
And splurged to soften
The corners of the village
With lilac drifts
And wisteria trained to show
The fullness of a May day.
And iris tongues
Loll and flounce
And poppies are prominent
Atop the walls,
And all the other
Bells and beauties
Claim the air with scent
And the space
With perennial buttresses
Of stalks and spikes
And overarching species,
Daubing brickwork
With exuberant flourishes
Like the flair of the artist’s mood.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Orchard

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

Six old codgers
Wizened as the crooked years
And mottled with age pigment
Lean on the honey stone wall
Resting their swollen joints.
Their feet are slippered in the grass
And feel the settled earth of the village,
Cradled in the seasons and strewn with
Apple blossom, windfall or crisp autumn leaf.
It’s spring now
And daffodils, yellow upon the pasture
Make good on the bulb planter’s promises,
And cowslips, mild in the moss,
Peep for the buttermilk light.
The old boys lean and watch,
Pondering as their grandfathers did
And the grandfathers before that.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

On The River

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

For Mima

She drifts on a dream
That is a river,
One hand playfully trailing
In her wake,
Fingers idly
Tracing the ripples
At her fingertips.
She hums in sweet mellow moods:
Time unravelling
Like the gentle welling
Of the slow current.
She thinks:
Some live their lives
Adrift the river,
Holding nothing
Of the passing life
But the feeling
Flowing on meander’s
Subtle pondering.
She thinks:
I should like that life
And the peace
Found in the waltzing leaf,
In its slow and submerged tumbling
And ever rolling motion forward,
Drawn on always by the river’s irresistible pull.

 

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

 

For All My Muses

~ distilledvoice ~ 4 Comments

Upon your mortal flesh
my eyes, excited to new seeing,
find windows
in which the script
unravels like quicksilver ink
heart-fast across the page,
and sees off
the mood mundane
written boring in to static fact
of joyless unbecoming,
and instead
thrills the moments in their chain,
and makes them
stones for stepping,
and feet, light for skipping,
as if life, after all,
were not ceaseless, aggravated toil
but flight, free upon the wing.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Avenue Of Finches

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

The finches and dawn tits
Make an avenue of the gardens,
Traversing boundary and fence
As if they weren’t hurdles
But opportunity along the way.

Each March they make their highway here,
Gathering seeds from spent winter stems.
And from pods, crisp in bunches, they cling,
Feeding as if the wait were over
And the joyous work of spring begun.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Gnats Rise

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

Gnats rise
To their dusk dance:
Life in transient, delicate form
Upon the stillness of mist
Dewing in the blue
Of copse and dell’s hollow.
An echo of the spring warmth
That touched the ground
And energised
The display upon the dim edges
Of the nearing night,
Bringing lives
To delicacies and finesse
With hardly a wingbeat
To keep them buoyant
And borne on sunlight’s shadow.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Tender Light

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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These first tender breaths
Of mildness
In daffodil sun
And light’s expansion outwards,
Are call to every dormant root
And bulb hunkering,
And call to birds
Delighted on the branch,
To shake off the long sleep
For thoughts of pretty plumage
And spirited strut and prance
And skyward dance
On tendril wisp
Of energy awakening.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016