Sitting in a park
in Paris, France
as kids climb trees
they’ll soon outgrow
and birds busy
their feathers in a dance
of freedom we’ll never know.
I fall through your thoughts
as someone tickles strings
on cords too distant
to be discovered
and wonder where you sat;
on the orange carpet
caressed by the concerns
of a girl growing through
her own song of sorrow?
Next to the guy with the hat
and harmony, no doubt,
who guards his guitar
from the bright light,
in the as yet starless sky,
as if he knows how celebrity
will one day cripple his creativity.
A blackbird bows before me,
burrowing his burdens into the
road, looking for crumbs cast off,
for a little refuge, like you did,
like we all do, a little distraction
from the circling sun and
shining skins blustering under
bland and blander. Sitting in a park
in Paris, France, as if in a trance
from 22 to 42, when I first
found favour with following you,
back room, no light, bedsit;
we were masters of the Marais,
simple singletons, senselessly
sinking innocence into the marshes,
courting kisses for a single spark
and rising over losses we thought
at the time to be insurmountable
disasters. But they were just dances
like these tiny birds around me now,
prances we perform, up and under, over
and through. We are all naked birds
flirting with honesty and invisibility
under the sweltering sun, sometimes
remembered, sometimes forgotten
before begun. Sitting in a park
in Paris, France, still trying
to understand the message in the
melody underlying and still trying to
comprehend the cords
forged in the flesh of the boy so blue.
All Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
Audio version available on Soundcloud:
Damien B. Donnelly 
Oh, Damien. You’ve done it again. Just beautiful and flowing. A verbal portrait.
Thank you my dear! So touching to read your comment. I hope you are keeping well- I heard it in the wind that Paris is missing you 🤗
The wind does not lie. I am desperately trying to find a time to sneak back and search for my little apartment that will be “for keeps”. I really enjoyed hearing your voice on that post today. It made it so much better to hear you speak it–where you took your pauses and where you sped it up. Manifique!
I love the way you thread in and out of Joni’s words and through your own Paris, a bridge of words and song. (K)
Thank you, I’m glad you saw the influencer slipping in and out! 🤗🤗
Another wonderful one, Damien. I like how Kerfe put it–threading in and out” and “a bridge of words and song.” (Maybe a bridge over troubled waters.) 🙂
Love your blue album tribute cover.
And–every time I read “sitting in a park in Paris, France,” Joni sang the phrase in my head.
Every time I sit in a park these days it’s the song in my head, especially with this heat and the crowds gathering ‘en mass’, the other day we had 37 degrees in Paris, home of concrete, no air con and condensed spaces- it was not pretty. The sun soaked up so much that we lost the room for air! 😂🤗🔥
Isn’t it funny how songs like that get stuck in our heads and seem totally appropriate for the time and place? As I get older, I’m more thankful for a/c. Ours has been running full-time the last few days.
A/C is one of the luxuries France hasn’t really invested in yet. It’s fashion forward but infrastructure far behind 😳😂🤗
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