We strike matches
along the shiny skins
of polished apples,
bite into the heat
of burning coals
that hold no seeds
within their core,
watch our reflections
on the heavy skins
of those ripening fruit
as if it will show us
a truer representation
of who we might be
because it too holds
a core beneath its skin
while the ashes add
a bitter fruitlessness
to the taste now thick
upon our tongues.

If we were obliged
to share, perhaps
we’d take more time
to peel back slowly
instead of striking
all those matches
that burn too quickly
while guiding blindly
all those ashes into
our oh so open mouths.

 

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

RED

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Old wheels still turn through new miles.
We are more than we look- muscle
is not only what it takes to transform.
We skirt old roads now well educated
on my departure, it’s not just the seasons
that circle back on themselves. I’ve left
parts of me in every other recess in order
to recognize the parts I portrayed, later on,
when the route returns me to worn road.
I peddle at times without predetermination,
you cannot lose the track if you haven’t
traced its outline, beforehand. The road too
is more than just a route as we roar along
its rigor despite its restriction. I was never
happier than when taking the dirt track-
scattering over-weighted thoughts
of who I was upon the disrupted dust.

Old wheels still turn through new miles.

  

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

KEPT IN RECESSES OR THROWN TO DUST

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Lilium lancifolium lies back
in a bed we repositioned
last spring under the scorch
of today’s mid-afternoon melt.

In a slow movement that set her
into structure, before the dawn woke
the rest of us, she assumes a position
to demonstrate the perfect pliancy
of her freckled petals and pushes
everything out to be eaten.

Next to her majesty, in the sluggish
shade of a white pot on the worm-
twisting soil, succulents seal in
all they will ever need to survive.

Somewhere in between I, myself,
am planted with all that I hold vital
willingly caged within these ribs
not even I can open while my fears

sway like stamen from this skin
as I pray for the wind to soon
introduce them all to flight.

IMG_0398

  

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

IN OR OUT

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Dominant bird rings on repeat his call
in the late afternoon- arriba, arriba,
arriba he appears to echo whilst other
feathered fellows join in his mash-up
as if they all know the price is now

time sensitive-

this has become their season to shine-
they sing and we sit in their shadow,
the quiet of our confinement seemingly
sweetening the juices of their melody. 

 

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

THE SWEETER SONG

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9 is not yet known to this Sunday morning
but already I’m playing catch up with the dawn
in a once foreign field now renamed home,
running after breaths and age that is unobtainable
like caressing clouds or surviving on the sap of stems
where needles immerse nettles in a loneliness
we have come now to understand
as we make small steps out of the reeds of isolation.

There will be a telling later, after, in how we survived
the conservation in place of consumerization.

Will we continue running to catch up, later, after,
with all we lost or come out to shed the macho master
of the world masquerade and realise we’re all nettles
standing in the shadows of much brighter flowers,
our skins stabbed with too many stings
to truly get close to the truth of who we could be.

 

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

THE STING

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When I was a child,
was I thoughtless or taught less
or was there less to think about,
less to love?
Though life was never loveless.
When I was a child,
did I dream less because
I didn’t know any more?
When I was a child,
I lied without knowing
the truth of a lie.

As a man,
the closer I come to the truth,
the more I turn to the dream,
for now there’s less to love,
less to give,
for so much more
has been taken.

When I was a child,
I held trust like it were breath,
ever buoyant,
flirted with faith
as if it were a fountain
that could never fail.

As a man,
breath grows cautious
to capture
and faith has fallen to faithless,
has fallen to fate, to fear.

When I was a child
a puzzle held 10 simple pieces
and when combined
they formed a whole.

Now, as a man,
the pieces are countless
and this puzzle
is far from complete.
When I was a child,
I played like the sun
would never settle,
now playing is paused
as paws are poised
for the running,
running to catch the light
before it falls off a horizon line
they tell me is not a flat drop off,
but this is a truth
I must see for myself
so as to know it’s not a lie.

Time falls
into something, off something
and we are runners in races
whose finish-lines
we don’t want to face.

The truth
is not what we dreamed of
when we knew not
the value of that dream.

As a child,
finish was never a word
that took flight in dreams,
no bird flaps its wings
with desires to meet its end.

I see, in the mirror,
dimly, and sometimes clearly,
pieces that have parted
and the puzzle that remains
between child and man,
between innocence and all the light
that grew dimmer
after the loss,
and between the thinking,
the taking and the being taken.

And somewhere
between it all, I am there,
looking back at who I’ve become.

  

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

PLAYING GAMES

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Rushes rustle a calling to the rain

mimicking
the sound
of those
molecules
of moisture
they long
to feel
against
their
sharp-
edged
skins.

We all
learn
to mimic
what we
must,
let go
of all
we can
not
hold,
lean in
to what
we love,
fake all
we can
not
feel.

Gulls
squawk
overhead
for prized
position
whilst
wings
spread
out
to claim
all that
eventually will come down from the clouds.

  

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

 

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GIVEN TIME

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I live now
in various shadows
and only a few whose forms I’d distinguish.
By a round tower
on a little hill
at the far end of a short road
I can read the names of the first ones
who named this place
as a home,
I’ve no faces for these folk
who were whispers even to my own mother,
the mother and father of her father
who is now but a whisper to me.
The bag man he called me
till he passed on when I was 5.
I remember
saying goodbye
to his bald shiny head
in a dark room with brown walls
and a glass atrium you walked through to get to him.
Now he walks beyond the glass
while I’ve come back to the rooms
that once held his warm voice and soft shuffle
along with his wife, my gran, my nana
with her cardigans
and concern and coppers
for the collections in the church
and later, in the summer-
for outings to the slot machines
where the train comes
to an end at the edge of the sea.
All things have endings, even waves crash.
Nana is now
in the grounds of that church
she gave her coppers to, next to her man,
her Pop, real name Bernard- my middle name.
All things come back
like days
after darkness,
names that we lost
and laughter after loss
and then mothers to their mothers,
like mine did when Dad lost us,
and sons to their mothers,
like I did when Paris said adieu.
Adieu- to God, it means. Funny way to say goodbye.
All things come home, like me now
in this house,
now my mothers,
once home to her mother’s sacred heart
and her father’s devilment,
once the home to my mother’s grandparents
and her brothers and sisters
and the cats and the dogs
and the odd chicken
they kept in the pig-cot that never held a pig
where the boys stored all the pears
they’d pilfered from the orchard.
We planted
rhubarb last week
and a sprig of wild spinach
I’d plucked from the edge of the savage sea
in the back garden of this little house
where the shadows watch over us
in various forms
that I’m trying to distinguish.

  

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

THIS HISTORY OF A HOME

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I took photos of us once, together, to remember
all I had before I set off to find myself in other fields
that other lands had whispered of other welcomes
across other waves, moments to return to later as I navigated
new roads, strange turns and gates I had to manage alone.
Now, our shadows sing again of the old songs we once sung
when we hadn’t considered to count our connections.
We potter and ponder and eat and gossip and get grumpy
and take to our rooms and then eat again and garden and paint
and re-ponder and thread newly discovered thoughts across
old fields that still hold fertile as a familiar favourite.
When we come now to gates, we have seen what extends
beyond them and appreciate the safety of what exists within them
and so stop and listen to that song, recently resumed,
beneath all this stillness- mother and son, singing slowly
on the same path, somewhere between the coming home
and the lockdown. Someone sent wishes recently and I said-
We’re back together and they replied- You were never apart.

Mother and son, capturing moments because somewhere else,
out there in another field, another town, another land,
another mother has lost another son or a daughter to a gun
or a bomb or a noose or a knife or a knee or a pill
or a pointless moment that no camera will ever
be strong enough to capture how the world just stops,
thereafter
I took photos of us once, but now we simply try to capture
as much time as we can possibly hold.

  

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

TO CAPTURE EACH OTHER TOGETHER

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We
are
not
always
daughter to the day or son to the stars.
Some
times
space
shrinks
and we find ourselves light years away
from
the planets
that hold the answers to where we came from.
We
take
giant
steps
across
uncharted
terrains,
nerves attached to transmitters connected to nothing but a need to know.
Eminent
are these
swinging
spheres we
circumnavigate
in search of the solution to the question of how we came to draw our first breath.

 

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

ORIGINS

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