Was he not tied
and turned on the tide,
was there not light 
and dark by his side,
though the morning’s sun
rose as his bride
twas the black of the moon
at night that found stride.

Was he not washed
and worn on the waves,
was he not cracked
like the sea cuts the caves,
in the morning did he count
the slaughter, the saves,
was he ashamed of how many
he’d laid in their graves?

Was he not just a reed
washed over the sand,
was he not just a vessel
on an ocean unmanned,
controlled in the day
where blood was banned
but unbound in the night
the beast took his hand.

Was he not just a man
who’d from day lost sight?
Was there not to be compassion
for the monster in the night?
But the hunger he managed
to contain before the light
was too much in the darkness
to put up a fight.

The best of a man,
a wolf of a beast
but never the two
could ever find peace,
Helios held famine,
Selene supplied the feast
but not a single God
could offer a release.

A savage surrender
into the sea was swept,
the hair of the hound,
the soul that now wept,
a man and the monster
drowned in the depth
and in their beds, his children,
safely then slept.

And was he not tied
and turned on the tides
like the rise and fall
of a twist that divides
as the nature of man
and monster collides
but when the darkness descends

the light

it subsides.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly