While The Sun Set

While the sun set

Our thoughts got caught

In the sticky thorns

Of the news

And we all remarked

On how terrible it was.

And as the sky became redder

And wider and filled

With darting bugs,

Feasting bats upon the wing,

We said it was a travesty.

And when the moon,

A slither in the vastness

Of horizons broad as beginnings,

Slipped from behind an effortless cloud,

We continued with our worrying stories.

And at last, with but a pale glimmer

At the most western face of the day,

The final moment

When night was not yet night

And day still held sway,

We woke up,

Realised everything was alright

And that life was in fact joyous.

Sunset

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In the last hour
When the setting sun
Elongates our shadows
And en-goldens our skin,
There is stillness
Of last long light
In the gentle stroll,
And quiet in the wavelet’s
Sodary pulse,
And timelessness
In the lulling
Of seawater swishing
Upon the cushioning sand.

 

Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice

Photograph

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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

Sun Beings

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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

Collecting Shells

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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

Sunset At Slack Water

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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

Sunset

Sun skinned
Boys
Delight
In the day’s final hour,
Frolicking on the jetty
And blue beside,
Wrestling each other,
Daring, jumping in and out,
Diving from the rocks,
Shouting language
From their boisterous mouths:
Dipping their matte skin
In Mediterranean
And coming out
Anointed in the gold
Of liquid
Painted by
By the sun’s
Last moment.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015