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
walking
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
Sea Air
Touched by the algal roll
Of clump and de-clump,
Slosh and surge,
And imbalance
Wet wishing for flat rightness,
And then again
And again
In wave formed turbulence
And the swirling instabilities.
The air
Is sea trained and tainted,
Salt kissed
And matter coated,
Ozoned and flecked
With crest alighted bubble
Of brown spume
And froth.
It’s almost greasy to the touch
And heavy on the breath,
And fresh
For it is
Of sky
And horizon’s depth
And leagues made:
Palette painted with tumultuous storm
And the quietness of sublime calm,
And all the colours there between.
I receive it
With face seaward seeing
And the fingers of a tussle
At the ringlets of my fringe,
And a wide, wide thought
Of emptiness,
Where Seagulls
Glow in sunbeams
And dare the fickle cliffs,
And dive for wild fish
If only for the joyful plunge of it.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
In The Muted Blues
In the muted blues
And metal greys
Of sea and skyscape ranging
Wide and windless rippled,
Purple flowers
Strew the tussock,
Guiding light footsteps
Through the hummock greens
To the ways of the coastal path.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
On A Cornish Cliff
Crouching in rock gardens,
Among the hardy flowers
Strummed by the sky’s wide wind,
She finds her perfect moment
And is moved to art,
As if the moment had found her
To carry out its wish
To live beyond its simple richness:
Live once in being witnessed
And then again and again
In the paint’s still vivid kiss.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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