Unfurling ferns –
Undone by the light
Or the moisture
Touching the root
Or by cue unfathomed
But by the mind of the plant
– Reach out
For expansion’s
Many multiples.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
wales
Beside The Stream
Beside the stream’s
Incessant polishing
Of stones grown
Round and golden
As sun-speckled eggs,
Groves of lush garlic leaf
Cluster to the damp lips
Of the woodland floor
And raise illuminations
To light the meandering path
In its pondering
Through dappling glades
Of newborn leaf
And bluebells
In strewn multiples
And swathes ankle deep.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Winter Welsh Cottage
Not more
Than rockfall,
It dwells hunkered
Beside the spate
And the wizened,
Moss bearded,
Lichen fleece trees,
Bent to authority
Prevailing.
Its stone walls
Sieve the moor wind
Of its cold fingering,
And heather herb scent
Sweet on its fidgeting tips
Ingress on drafts
Under the mischievous door.
The mist is low
And sight is brought close
As weather-fallen
Days and nights
Resemble the gloom
Blurring the edges of the world.
How can this not affect
The mind of the old man
Thoughtless before the stove
Burning low on enclosed
Vistas of wintertime?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Sleeping Mountains
He sleeps
Through millennia:
The days and years
Indistinguishable.
His body
Wrapped in a mottle skin coat
Weathers enduring seasons.
Elements
In their raw state,
Abrasive and unforgiving,
Fracture his skin
To cleaved splinters
Sloughed clattering
In scree slips,
Through which
Sparse plants
Eke meagre.
This is how it is
Upon his slumber-back dormancy,
Where heather and bracken
Strewn wirey-wild
Flower purple
And unfurl
In fronded reach,
In nooks
And boggy patches
Between white cataracts
And the slow lichen roses
Tattooed
On every blemished slab and edifice.
Through this
He sleeps,
As time
Flows unnoticed.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Storm
From the prevailing west
Cyclonic lows
Push
Wet faced
Across
The foot scuffed
Rough,
Browning upon
The boundary rock,
Greying the low sky
And darkening every
Thoughtful perspective
To a buffeted corner
Of the wind swept mind.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
From Blueness
Sea born rhythms
Arrive in blueness pulse
After blueness pulse,
And where the shallows
Show in pale shoals
And the globes of stones
Glow egg-like and shimmering,
The waves rise troubled
And breathe the air
To the new azure
Of their turbulent lungs,
Curling and introvert
In their wet work
Until the almost perfect
Curve of the rolling surf
Slips from the form and balance
Of its clothes
And seeks abandon
In bubble
And white water surge:
All its energy fragmented
And absorbed
In the froth and melee
Of interface.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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