How still it is,
Silent
‘Neath the somber shade of night,
Beyond the light
Already long departed
And sleeping in the shadows,
Alone in thoughts
That twist and turn
And dig deep
Amid the this and that,
The important and redundant,
And all the while
The stillness builds-
Oblivious to the restlessness
Beneath my skin,
Between my toes,
A sense of something
In the as yet unseen-
Somewhere out there
My 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 who I will,
In time,
Grow into.
Tomorrow will be the memory
Of who I was
While today exists only the dream
Of what tomorrow will bring.
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,
Perched once
In another land,
In another time,
On virginal shoulders of Athena,
Who 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 morphosis is made of me…

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly