Before the fall,
A flash
Of red chemistry
In the streak
Of autumn’s
Dying blaze.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
wildlife
Autumnal Gold
The Autumnal gold
Of a faraway sun
Attunes perfectly
With the leaf litter
Strewn loose
And curled tan
In brown banks
Of crisp exsanguination.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Autumn Scent
Now
With reluctant light
The wet earth
Breathes at last,
Breaks its dry fast
And puts
The eager tendril
Of must and spore rot,
Conveyed in shadow-damp,
To the dismantlement.
For what falls –
The withered leaf,
The stem, no longer turgid,
The petals browning,
– Mould will impregnate
And make an earthly scent
In season rich lament
And sad fermentation
Of soil and soul bound things
Untethered and unfettered
In their sinking sleep
And matters cool release
From forms previous.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Autumn Begins
Autumn begins
In the leaves’ metamorphosis:
Flames’ tongue
Scorching the green retreat.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
September Spider
Somehow they are flowers too,
Plump and central
To their strands
And gossamer petals.
Bodies worked at
And made in secret
Through the summer months
Among loam and beneath leaf,
Until the garden
Grown golden and fruitful,
Leaves crinkled
With the sum of age,
Boasts beasts
Materialised to the cradle
Between stems:
Their worldly wears
And accumulation manifest,
Their nets
Set to the bountiful breeze,
Their fingertips poised
For the flower forms of insects
Borne on sunshine
And wingbeats.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
In A Patch Of Stone Walled Field
In a tumbledown landscape
Above the sea,
Olive trees flutter silver green
In patches of thin earth
And scattered stone,
Scraped into a rough field.
Over the wall
A hobby of a vineyard,
Draws deep-root thirsty
For its plump infants
Suckling on the vine,
And the sun
Polishes them
To succulence
And sweet raisin wine.
And in the fallen down next,
Fennel grows rampant
And unkempt
Spicing with heady aniseed.
And in the shabby next
There is lavender on the wind
Emollient with herbaceous strands,
Mixing freely
With the airborne personality
Of wild thyme
And the pheromonal
Purple flowers of rosemary.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Fruiting Bodies
Fruiting bodies
Like fleshy fingers
Examining the other world,
Of air and light.
And beneath
In the thready net,
Mycelium reach
Through the body
Of the earth
Drawing nutrient
From the discarded clothes
Of everything
Let loose
And shed.
The raw components
Once more
Spent
In transition
Of beneficence
Reinvigorated.
© 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
The Low Angle Sun
The stream breathes
Cool and damp
To the foliage hues,
Moist to the hollow
And bank,
And Shadowed
By the lateness of the hour.
Only in a patch
Of borrowed light
Do poplars glow
Golden on every leaf,
Their high thoughts fluttering
In the low angle sun.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Thoughtless Pollinating
When it wakes
It hears the flowers
Call in scents.
It desires
The ultra violet
Of colours
And the deep
Well of love
In which nectar pools
And collects.
When it wakes
It thinks of nothing else
But the warmth on the wing
And the burrowing head
Thoughtless in the dream
Of pollinating.
When it wakes
It be itself
And thinks
Not a thought
Outside of its being.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
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