The light
In the lens
Of the Adriatic
Glows
Turquoise
As it shimmers
Aquatic.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
travel
Faraway Thought
The blue earth
Hints
At curvature
Where horizon
Mists
To a dreaming
Faraway thought.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Beachcomber
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
Beach Shack
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 The Refracted Light
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
Half The Story
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
Root Question
No less
The channelled stream,
Roots
Pool slowly
Over a hundred years.
To our fast eyes
They seem still.
But to the stone
Looking on,
They are a mass
Of writhing tentacles,
Searching water source
Like whiskered mole’s
Thirsty earthward
Push and burrowing.
Are these living pipes
And strands of cellulose
The captors of water’s
Slip and silver
Or are the trees
The means
By which water
Yearns to alter state,
Transpirate
To lighter, airy
Agitation?
Are my eyes
But liquid desire
To see,
In beauties reflection,
The flow
Working through
The All
And everything?
Am I served
Or do I serve
The blood
Of the fluid earth?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Flows Over Eons
Flows
Over eons
Work stone,
Fluid polishing
And gullying
The rock,
In summer trickle
Winter lock
And spring gush,
Carving bowles
And scoops
And sockets
In edifice
So cool pools
Dwell transparent
In blueness,
And shimmer
Soda bubble fresh
Where cataracts
Endlessly burrow.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Southern French Village
The boulangerie
Opens its sleepy eye
To the bird tweeting village
And looks upon
A once neat boulevard
Aged to a trunk lumpy
Old woman, clucking
Pleasantries as she ambles
With white crusty bread
To her shutter clad dwelling
Limp on its hinges
But crookedly beautiful
With time.
Her garden is put to work:
A crop of gnarled tomatoes
Fruiting in pastel lanterns,
Grapes yellowing
And freckled on the vine
And a font
Where honey oozes
Through the faucets
Of voluptuous figs,
Loosened and falling
As purses unclasped
And relaxing
Amid the gravel
In which herbs muster volatile
In air sweetened
To Provençal notes
And excited to fragrance
By a brush past
Or even the sun
Hot in the radiating stones.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Preserving The Catch
Fishermen haul in their net,
Bring in the unseen dimension
While fair skinned tourists
Haul in a delightful authenticity.
The net is wriggly with silver reflex,
Scales shed as a last desperate breath
Bloodies the gills, and tourists snap
In their own reflex to capture the dying light.
It soon quells as each silver fish
Relinquishes and stills on the beach.
Fishermen tidy their nets and
Tiny fry, caught but unwanted
Dry on the sea of sand,
Embalmed in the photograph
In which tourists preserve,
Just as the fishermen salt
And lay their catch in the sun.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
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