—

How still it is, silent
beneath the somber shade
of night, beyond the light
already departed. Alone in thoughts
that twist and turn and dig deep
amid the this and that,
the important and the redundant,
the stillness builds, oblivious
to the restlessness beneath my skin,
between my toes, a sense of something
unseen, somewhere a future
already on the move, shaken
into substance, substantially self-sufficient,
while I sit in silence, in stillness, in waiting,
wrapped up cocoon like beneath
the hibernating blanket of this interim,
this condition of considered change.

I will soon slip into a sleep
born of the metamorphosis
of the moment,

aware of who I was,
in the knowledge of who I am
and accepting of what I will,
in time, become.

Tomorrow awaits the memory
of who I was while today exists
only the dream of what will come.
This stillness is as teasing
as the unknown route ahead,
the trail my feet have yet to thread,
to carve out a crater
that smacks of existence
long after I have journeyed on
and found fresher, unexplored lands
I shall, one day, for a time call home.
Somewhere, just out of sight,
on the edge of this stillness a night owl
toots a tale of transition
above the silent slumber of a world
with eyes closed, unconscious
to the weighty wisdom of tomorrow’s light.

The erudite Owl,
once perched in another land,
in another time, on the shoulders of Athena,
witnesses the world through eyes
that see beyond the darkness
of all that has been and has yet to unfold
and carries, in his very presence,
on this very night, in this very stillness,
while all else surrenders to the silence,
a confirmation of the transition felt within me,
sensed around me and promising
to take hold of me as sure as he will
spread his well-worn wings,
find his flight and take to the shadows
before morning finds it’s light

while all through time
a metamorphosis is made of me.

—

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly