En Francais
Il es une balancelle
In English
A swinging chair
Hung in the languid air
Shaded by the rustling oaks
And caressed
By a honeyed breeze
In to which
The birds twitter
So the mind
Is temperate
As the perfect afternoon
And thoughts
Are spaced
As the young apple
And the quince tree
In the orchard
And time
Is the lolling arm
Let loose
From a snooze
And the comfortable rocking,
Gently to and fro,
Dans le reve
De la balancelle.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
You know those
Family friends
Whose house
Nestles deep
Within a rural village;
Where time follows
Its own wholesome course
And wellies are never far
From being worn
On Sunday walks
Through fields
And quiet footpaths;
Where afternoons
Are your own,
Comfortable in arm chairs
Or at the long lunch
Where the food
Is as fresh as the company
And somehow tastier
For being plucked
From gardens near
And in harvest’s
Flush of giving.
Well,
This is us.
In our thoughts
And in our place,
And in our home
From home.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Dedicated to and inspired by Pig Hotel Nr Bath http://www.thepighotel.com
Just saying the word
Is enough to quell
Its worrisome opposite.
You appear
To have swelled in breath
And buoyancy
Around the chest.
And more,
Your face is full
And your eyes
Are lit,
And your smile
Has spread
So a yellow sunrise
Wells
And the summer
Crests,
And you
Absorb
As much
As you reflect.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
For Mima
Man’s Detritus
Cast high
With crisp seaweed
Under the bleaching sun.
All is soluble
In the end,
For the solvent
Washes twice a day
And more
In salt air
Corrosion.
Metal is eaten
Mottled bite
By rust smudge
And leafy fragmentation,
And plastic twine
Frays and becomes powdery.
The plastic bottle too
Loses integrity,
Degraded by the claiming sea,
Scrubbing every edge
To the smooth curve of bays
And roundish pebbles consistency:
Perhaps mocking us
For our solid forms
And legacies,
Our memories
Held aloft and alive –
To never die:
Or perhaps treating us
As equals on the path
To unbecoming
And the endless tide
Of things passed
And passing
To the voluminous being:
Then from dissolution
And constituents floating,
Reformation
Of something new and free.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
I yearn
For deeper blue
Of fathoms deep
And bottomless,
To which my thirsty skin
Might imbibe
The cool
And my heart
Might drink it in,
As if it were an oxygen,
Aqueous and limitless.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
5 o’clock sun
Paints
Water colours,
Touches white flecks
With delicate
Brush strokes.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
All in the world
Is fringing
Something else
And matter
In spectrums
Pronounces the light.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
She finds sweet-bitter nostalgia
And the succulent melancholy
Of a faraway gaze,
In her wondering
At the grandeur:
And her place within it.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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