‘An Irishman’s heart is nothing but his imagination’
George Bernard Shaw

I came back, looking to find the pieces I’d left behind,
in my parting, having since shed so much of the things
once thought treasures along the trail. I came back,
wondrous for the parts as yet unopened, unlike the heart
I never knew how to close, or the route I never knew
how to resist. Even in that taxi, that took me away,
I held your hand and thought of another, since departed,
and wondered whose next I would hold. Even my thoughts
had been off and running, always eager for something else,
the something shiny, the scent of something in flight.

I never liked to nest too long in the shadow of the same tree.

I came back to recall the beginning, to remember all
the dreams I had yet to deliver and there, upon a wall
where I watched a robin consider the rouge of his chest,
a wall I thought I’d never get back over, I saw your words
and realised all that I am and will be is because of how
faithful this heart has been to the concept of imagination.

And I turned and took to the task with red chest ready to roar.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

I’m off now to attend the first day of the Doolin Writers’ Weekend here in Doolin, Co. Clare on the west coast of Ireland.