Covid 19

ADAPTION

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Things change.

Sunday morning I rise,
though with no rolling stone miracle,
and thread footsteps into the field
where the passage of daisies have taken over
from the pressing soles of sport.
Things change.

Later, in cream pants
and oversized sofa sweater instead of the customary
suited and booted parade affair,
I drop smoked salmon into foamy scrambled eggs
and break fresh baked bread
in the golden glow of the newer kitchen
grown over old land
and think of all the loaves and fishes
that some don’t have to share
or the glow or the land or even a kitchen.
Things change.

Later still,
so much stillness amid all the disturbances,
I shower stale sweat off confined skin
and then snack on corn cakes
instead of Easter eggs
and pull strung-up chicken
from the fridge to stuff its belly with herbs-
to decorate the day with a scent
of something familiar
amid all this change.

Things change.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

IN BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE SLEEPING

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

Packed like yams into dusty carriages
we watch from the safety of our sitting room
where Nana used to sit and iron by the table
and Pop, in the corner, with his pipe,
now just names in prayer and that picture
of their wedding on a wall that still stands
and they, long taken to the sleep.

We sit in all this space while passengers
are packed like sandwiches in tin tubs,
trains swapping stations and germs
on the Underground, over the water
where I used to live, once, when nana
was still ironing and Pop, already sleeping.
I was happy then, I think, I tell myself,
I played happy at times, hilarious
and happy little me in Hampstead,
back stage, behind the spotlight
and considering the distance
I’d covered and the sitting room,
the sofa, the Nana and the Pop.

We watch from that sitting room,
now, with its ceiling since lowered
so the heat stays closer to the body-
the only contact we’ll consider-
she on the sofa and me- single armchair
for single boy returned home as man
and now kept home in quarantine,
in close quarters, two grown-ups
counting the money they cannot spend
and watching lives unfold on the telly
after playing clean-up in the garden
and looking to the trees for carvings
of connections since taken to the sleep.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BUDS OF INVINCIBILITY

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Notes multiply under an orange blossom moon.

We pour music into cups and songs sprout
from rose trees that have yet to bend towards the bud
while daisies turn noisy in the far field as the grass
orchestrates the dawn’s chorus and petals tremble
in the wake of all that once shivered in the stillness.

Clouds melt like warm snow beneath our imagination.

We wear it like candy and when we eat it we grow giddy
and gravity gives way to the illusion that we too
can rise from this heavy earth, drowning dust blazing
a distance into our trail as we pat the sun with our smiles
and that orange moon melts into a melody we can taste
on our tongues while our weary eyes close, for a while,
in a slumber the angles have created to cradle our chaos.

Notes multiply in back gardens where invincible comes
to conquer all that needs distance and all that is disease.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 

Inspired by a Twitter Poetry Prompt

THESE ARE THE DAYS

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Rooms get smaller.

We close doors tighter,
words come like judgements,

what’s left to share when you’ve shared
everything.

Rooms feel smaller.

like big plants in small pots,
like small meals on big plates
I want to break.

I want to watch Netflix
in Pj’s, all day, every day
but I won’t look lazy in company-
even her company.

So I write poems and books- nothing new
and chop down trees and reclaim the garden she’s covered
in weeds to brush things under like the rugs indoors-
the cover-ups we cough over.

In the evenings I write again and cook
and later we clean and you say you’d cook
but I can’t digest any more potatoes
or drink vegetables that have been boiled
to bland

in small pots
and we are just two big vegetables

resisting the urge to shout
in rooms too small to whisper.

I love you I say, and she does too
and we know it- but every day, every minute, every second
in these small rooms?

A BLACK CANVAS

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Mum tells of no moon tonight, as if it’s been lost,
as if the darkness will never rise and the sun will weep
at the thought of never catching another break.

We cut an apple tree in the back shadow of the front garden
yesterday but left the root, to remind it, perhaps, of how to return.
Should I have done the same for the moon? Left a calling card
of flagrant fondness for its fine form- a white blemish
on the blank canvas of that all-consuming blackness.

I never liked starting out on white, far too much choice
of where to place the blemish of the first brushstroke
but black… black is where you paint a Pollock.

I refuse to admit we’ve seen the last of the heaven’s eye-
Eden didn’t forsake us- it was the kids who grew bored of it.

The ground trembles underfoot, even here, beneath this house,
the roots are rummaging below the earth and their bloom
will be a full moon that some of us will not be able to see
and the rest will be unable to correctly comprehend it.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

AFTER THE TIDE

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

 

Light.
These are the days
were we look to see
where the light lingers longer.
We rise like crabs
up, after the tide has fallen,
up, through solid sand now sinking,
we can only wait so long-
can only hold so much weight
(in these days where we cannot hold at all)
before we cannot wait any longer
to touch the light,
catch a breath,
feel the sun.
Burn.

Come,
catch the light-
a bright distraction in the darkness.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 

Inspired by a #PoetryPrompt on Twitter from the #PoetInResidence Catherine Anne

Cullen at @PoetryIreland 

OTHER WAYS TO DANCE

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

I weigh flour and sieve it, like snow falling-
a few select seconds of harmless dust
to decorate these stopped streets
with isolated sirens that stir more in body
than the contents of this bowl.
I reach for those tiny flakes that offer rise
before pouring over the honey-
a smooth sweetness to cut the bitterness
of all that cannot be held in isolation.
Oil comes next, with the water,
once called incompatible
but when all else is distanced
other things find ways to dance.
While it boosts by the window
in a bowl of sunshine,
we take a slow stroll along small paths
that meander through muck and memory.
Mum points to a rickety door
she once knocked on to buy milk,
only a jug left now in an upper window
holding moments that will evaporate.
We pass fields and wonder
that is leek and what is weed
and in our minds make lists
of all that still grows in open pasture
while aisles look empty indoors.
Back home we sit, after bread is baked,
finding comfort in its crisp corners
as butter melts over this uncertain heat
and we remember yesterday,
when life was as simple
as a slice of bread with butter running.

 

All words and photographs and bread by Damien B. Donnelly (bread recipe from The Happy Pear)

Inspired by a #PoetryPrompt on Twitter from the #PoetInResidence Catherine Anne

Cullen at @PoetryIreland 

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QUACK

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

Solitude will guard gentle breath
as I slip from darkened day to dream,
even if the daffodil, now bright upon the bank,
comes despite concern.
I smile as the memory of this kindhearted bloom
unfolds within the shadows of this stilled room,
here, where corners ponder the importance of a cell.
In the distance, I hear a duck quack
as I return to the credit of comfort the pillow provides
and close my eyes to the sounds of madness.

 

Written as part of the Cobh Writers and Readers #PoetryPrompt featured on Twitter. Do drop by and join in the creative distraction. @CobhWR

THE POLITICS OF A SHAMROCK

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

We stopped the telly and the tea to watch the thunder
on Thursday; 1-100, 2-100, 3-100 we counted
in between the light growing dimmer and that storm,
coming closer.

We watched from distant windows, catching breaths
in between fears of catching colds while next-door
neighbours pulled curtains over concerns, here,
in a country where we thank the drivers of busses,
a country now the bearers of the cleanest of bottoms
whose aisles run empty
while out in the fields I see nothing but bounty.

I wish I had a river I could skate away on- I hear
the song but we can’t all slip upstream like the salmon,
these are not the days of the dance
and knowledge, until captured, is not a cure.

We packed up Patrick and his party with handshakes
and other saints for other seasons,
swapped the shamrock for a dozen hand sanitisers
and will drown out all fear in Dettol this year.

We stopped the telly and the tea last Thursday
to take stock of the storm, trying to capture
in the sky all we couldn’t see with our eye,
and all I saw was an eagle;
sitting shameless with a bowl of shamrocks
by an orange coloured man in a white house,
a far cry from the panic raining over my house.

We stopped the tea on Thursday to watch the thunder.

 

All Words and Watercolours by Damien B Donnelly.

 

Written as part of the Cobh Writers and Readers #PoetryPrompt featured on Twitter. Do drop by and join in the creative distraction. @CobhWR or follow the link below…

https://paperneverrefusedink.com/2020/03/14/cobh-readers-and-writers-writing-prompts/