Hope

SALMON DANCERS for Poetry Day Ireland

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This year’s theme is Truth or Dare so throughout the day I will be posting a few of my older poems on Truth and a few more on being Irish…

Salmon Dancers

And so swim the salmon, against
the rising stream, foam flushing
against fins as falcons fly overhead
in the fight for freedom, destiny
is not a dance that can long
be distracted, shiny specks of silver
dancing, darting, borne to beat back,
to wage against the rushing waters
as they make their way west. And so
swim the salmon, along the corroded
current of Connacht, that Atlantic
sojourn, that shore still swaying
in the shadow of those ancient songs
when souls set off in search of security
overseas, burdened boats battened
down with the beaten and the broken,
culled like cattle in the rain, boats
with bodhrans and fiddlers, singing
and dying through their dreams
of a new world, already mourning
the old lands, the homelands
they’d been swept from, kept from.
And so swim the salmon
as the storms rage, as they battle
onwards, salmon dancers, skating
on the waters, leaving trickles like stones
once tossed by hands now lost, tracks
to follow for others who’ll follow,
as others have followed, as others
who’ve fallen, their faces now faded.
And so swim the shining salmon,
off into the world with the sound
of home in every stroke.

  

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

BLACK IS ONLY SHADOW

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Winter has grey wings,
feathers of sodden soot
that come from concrete clouds
too dense to discern any light beyond.
Winter spawns grey wings
but spring is an architect of possibility
by a canal of colour that sweeps in
after the fright of the frost
and baths us in a blithe breath
that blows across a chest once in chains.

Round the red bricked bridge we ride,
each pedal pushing past the storms
that rained rivers through our winters.
Follow the river, she sings,
seasons are short but the earth is a sphere
turning towards the light,
dark doors open often into hopeful,
the river recalls its route
regardless of the water,
blue can be a bright beacon to bathe in,
black is only shadow
before it finds a reason to ignite in light,
bark is dry but the branch bares blossom.

We can be the water or the bridge,
the natural path or the paved plot,
the route is bright beyond the chains,
the greyest night is but a sleep behind
the colours waiting beyond the bend.

    

All words and water colours by Damien B. Donnelly

22nd poem for National Poetry Writing Month

GOLDEN HAZE

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Slow comes the morning,
eyes still dazzled by the delicate stars
now off trailing dust across the universe
as if plotting tracks to tempt us
further than the stubborn stance
of our single spotlights
and I wonder how far you got
as I sit here, in the silence
of this slowly waking morning light
casting shadows on the single form
in this too big room with no door
large enough to climb through.
We considered setting sails
on cotton clouds once, long ago,
in a corner of this concrete jungle,
a single streetlamp casting courage
onto our concerns of cutting free
like a jazz break from the base,
of burning our own trails of glorious starlight
across the deafening daylight.
I am breath that still can bleed now,
here now, far from that corner we once
we painted dreams on, trying to force
the foot to slow the speed of this time burning
while you; already taken to the dust,
now a speckled starlight
cutting your own groove
into an orbit I cannot observe
while tossing remembrances
down from the night sky
that fall and flitter
above the dizzying distraction
of this golden haze of mourning light,
still coming on slow.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

17th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

THE GARDEN

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The oracle speaks:

Go Goddess,

chant my wants on your wind;

elaborate fluff & lazy diamond dreams,

whisper me with delirious honey,

drive me to drunk, to drool,

I will lick language languid

from the beauty of your breast.

Sordid is screaming

but I hear a sweet symphony

has grow upon

those smooth skins

of your garden.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly with the aid of the oracle, obviously

A KISS OF A WISH

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–

I kissed a wish once

when time was tender as flora,

to swim as I fish once,

I wished.

I kissed a wish once

when hope was all that I had,

to be fine as a fish once,

I wished.

I kissed a wish once

when cornered by courtiers too curt,

to be free as a fish once,

I wished.

I kissed a wish once

but time was not to be told,

I lost my freedom, once,

but now have wings that unfold.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

Inspired by a twitter poetry challenge from @WrittenRiver asking us to draw inspiration from the painting of James Christensen above.

THE CYCLE

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

–

Come the cycle

wild through this dawn

of the daffodil,

I will be a vine in blossom,

a blanketed spring upon the prairie,

a seed of song to follow the frost

and you; the sun

in a season

too sweet for shade.

–

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly with the aid of the magnetic poetry oracle

FLUTTERING HOPE

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Silence surrounds

this sweet stillness,

icicles are falling;

tears streaming

new paths

down old windows

once home

to fading reflections

and the robin

and his red chested breast;

forever stained, forever beating,

flaps through the open field

in search of a hushed hope

in buds that will soon bloom,

in life that will soon turn

below the hardened earth

and muddied soil.

 

We have spilt blood,

been drunk on its bitterness

and still we parch for more.

 

Sweet is this silence;

these mornings breaking,

crisp and cold,

cutting through the layers

we are desperate to shed,

we too are seasonal;

we rise with a spring

and tumble through each fall,

we are hot headed

and cold hearted

when comfort constricts,

melting pain down windows

too frosty to show any solutions

until we are emptied

and in the silence,

in that slowly

sweetening stillness

we are renewed;

ready to cut new reflections

into the smooth surface

of that shatterable glass,

our faith fluttering

on wings of hope.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud

CHRISTMAS COVER UP

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

In the shadow of all its history,

in the sorrow behind its sparkle,

I sprinkle fairy lights on the drying roots

of this dying tree.

 

At the summit of all its beauty,

from the forest freshy felled,

I place a blood red rose on this tree

cut down from hope.

 

All words and photographs by damien B. Donnelly

HALF LIGHT, HALF NIGHT, day 17 of A Month with Yeats

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

Today’s quote for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats comes from ‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’. ‘The blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half-light,’ —W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/a-month-with-yeats-day-seventeen/

My poem is called HALF LIGHT, HALF NIGHT

 

And time finds them folded

between all that had been lost

and the hope of what yet might come.

And night finds them falling

between the dark clouds covering

and the hands that caress their bodies.

And the kiss finds them feeding

on a hunger they thought exhausted

beneath the truth the darkness can’t hide.

 

And in the half light,

half starved,

he fell beneath her dark cloths

cast in shadow

as if half forgotten,

half starved

for that blue light

once burning bright

in the dimming night.

And in the half light,

half jarred,

she sank beneath his old hold,

reborn in bold,

no longer

half accepting

that half starved

was the whole picture

as their hunger

pulled them tight.

And in the half light,

half scarred

from being alone but not alive

in this scrapyard,

they each half held

that half light,

half bright

and held each other

in a hope

below the night.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly