A poem inspired and written for the band Perkelt http://www.perkelt.com
Come away,
Come away with us
On wings of the whistle
And the haunting voice.
Come away,
Come away with us
On the guitar strummed
And those notes plucked.
Come away,
Come away with us
On myth’s fast gust
By drums so touched.
Come away,
Come away with us
On heart beats past
And magic not yet imagined.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The finches and dawn tits
Make an avenue of the gardens,
Traversing boundary and fence
As if they weren’t hurdles
But opportunity along the way.
Each March they make their highway here,
Gathering seeds from spent winter stems.
And from pods, crisp in bunches, they cling,
Feeding as if the wait were over
And the joyous work of spring begun.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Gnats rise
To their dusk dance:
Life in transient, delicate form
Upon the stillness of mist
Dewing in the blue
Of copse and dell’s hollow.
An echo of the spring warmth
That touched the ground
And energised
The display upon the dim edges
Of the nearing night,
Bringing lives
To delicacies and finesse
With hardly a wingbeat
To keep them buoyant
And borne on sunlight’s shadow.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
With March pleasant in the air
My gardener’s fingers
Find soil smudge
In their ready tips.
And the light footed heart
Of daffodil magic
And sunshine breath
Skips like lambs
To the work of seeds
Pregnant in their trays.
And I think:
On days like these
It’s not only the lungs that breathe
But the skin
And the brain
And the body,
And I feel that with the mellow rays
Of springtime in the bird’s announcing,
Man really could be
True husband to the world
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
These first tender breaths
Of mildness
In daffodil sun
And light’s expansion outwards,
Are call to every dormant root
And bulb hunkering,
And call to birds
Delighted on the branch,
To shake off the long sleep
For thoughts of pretty plumage
And spirited strut and prance
And skyward dance
On tendril wisp
Of energy awakening.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Where is the boy lost
In the journey to the man?
Where is the balance point
In which he slips in metamorphosis
Through youth toward old age,
In transit of time’s
Morphing body become?
Perhaps he is not lost
But changed in skin
And greying hair
And stiffness in the bones,
The boy alive
But draped in memory’s
Encrustations
That sway the free thoughts
Of boyish dreams
From all their boyish freedoms.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The pure thought
In blossoms open
Upon the branch
Nothing but this
In blue sky and air
As fresh as newness birthed.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The incomprehensible bud
Unsheathed of winter,
Awaits
Unbelievable expansion
In to the living myth of spring.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Through the window of your pen
Come words flitting
On the breath of memory,
Their heart beat
Rich on wings of poetry
And love’s prospecting reach
In to the unknown.
I watch the corner of your world
From the corner of mine,
And find there, similarity
In the mind’s agile tool:
Your eye open
As mine too is seeing.
There remains now
Only the conveyance
Via electrons and emanating light,
As I touch individual finger prints
To the keypads of a screen
And hear your soft keying
Responding in kind tapping
From another far continent.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
If I could drink the sky’s cool mood
And mix
The light of first blossoms
So delicately sprinkled in
Then I would
Or breathe a draught of first warmed air,
White fragrance bathed
In sunshine’s friendly face
Arriving to the newness in me
Then I would
Imbibe them both
To feel this first fine sustenance.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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