Around the white lilac bloom
Two white butterflies flirt
In spiral mirror images,
As if they were once
The petals on which
They now alight,
Revisiting for but the briefest instant
Of memory past
Before once again
Gambolling on updrafts
And the gentlest touches
Of wingtip flutterings
In the dance of butterfly love.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In one corner of the globe
The terrorists enforce
Their monoculture of thought,
While we in the free west
Subjugate the wilderness
And extort only the soil.
In both, the species diminish
As control devours
The slightest difference
And allows only
The one persistent idea:
That diversity must perish.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
A mood of flowers
Blooms upon the village
As if an agreement
Had been drafted
Between last years seeds
And every verge
Offering to couch botanic.
And ever crevice
Containing a crumb of soil
Or even a puff of dust
Lends its dampness
To root indulgence florid,
Borrowing mid-day heat
Radiated from old stone walls.
And the gardens?
Well, they have burst their borders
And splurged to soften
The corners of the village
With lilac drifts
And wisteria trained to show
The fullness of a May day.
And iris tongues
Loll and flounce
And poppies are prominent
Atop the walls,
And all the other
Bells and beauties
Claim the air with scent
And the space
With perennial buttresses
Of stalks and spikes
And overarching species,
Daubing brickwork
With exuberant flourishes
Like the flair of the artist’s mood.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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
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
O what solar incandescence,
Warm upon the face,
For us to freely take
From source
Diurnal everlasting.
And O what sustenance
In which we bathe
And garner flesh,
So we might glide
Upon the motive wing
High above it all,
Absorbing precious gift
In updrafts,
Light as breath
Of daffodil glowing
In yellow flush expressed.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Six old codgers
Wizened as the crooked years
And mottled with age pigment
Lean on the honey stone wall
Resting their swollen joints.
Their feet are slippered in the grass
And feel the settled earth of the village,
Cradled in the seasons and strewn with
Apple blossom, windfall or crisp autumn leaf.
It’s spring now
And daffodils, yellow upon the pasture
Make good on the bulb planter’s promises,
And cowslips, mild in the moss,
Peep for the buttermilk light.
The old boys lean and watch,
Pondering as their grandfathers did
And the grandfathers before that.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
It’s as if the spirit,
Pale green and new,
Brushed our realm
For the briefest instant,
Igniting the cool magnitude
Wrapped in guts of plants
So all are suddenly aware
And blinking and charged
And rolling on in lattices
And internal xylem flows,
Abandoned to their task
To raise the sexual forms
Of flowers in to the high air,
Burgeoning with all the winged
Busyness and assistance
Brought by the sun’s worship.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
He spins his breath
In to a spell
Of enigma circling,
Like an auric cloak of twisting fog
Behind which he ducks
In the maintainence of mystery.
What dwells within the vortex
Behind the wall of half
Answered questions
And glimpses
Drawn away by the spell?
Is there a mystery within
Or only the wish of mystery
And its subtle trickery
Of the hidden man?
I invite you,
Wizard behind the spell of
Manipulated wonderment:
Step forward, naked and without the
Swirling clothes that hide your name
And deflect every question
To a riddle in a cul de sac.
Step out, Wizard.
Is not real magic,
To be visible, straight forward,
Unclothed and vivid as the thing
Unashamed and confident:
The mysterious wand set down,
The spell dispersed,
The conjuring acquitted,
The self beneath, unmasked.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
A day or two at most
In this floriferous moment,
Where white is defined
In garlands
And upon the breeze
And strewn upon the green.
The garden in pale fresh notes,
Hardly even a thing
Before altered
And borne away
Upon the wind filled clouds
Searching in the blueness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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