Waterfall
humanity
THE STING
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
WHEN SEARCHING FOR WHO WE WILL BE, AFTERWARDS
What if a rose grew on the far side of the moon,
now, after, later?
Would we spread out time to explore the space
between the bloom and the branch?
Nature is a construct, much like the moon-
we don’t always consider it when we cut its roots
or ignore its connection to the current.
Remove ourselves from obstruction and regard potential
from this far side of confined distance
that plants consideration.
See how far a single petal can travel without our interaction.
We cannot go back to before. Select assimilate
instead of annihilate.
There is a rose now, growing on the far side of the moon
and it didn’t need our manhandling to get there.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
GOOD DAY
They call it Good Friday, Mum initiates
the conversation early for fish and chips
and somewhere, not far from subconscious,
I near a church and its pressure leaning in
on her sudden sway for the taste of something
fishy, less meaty, today, on this Good Friday
where tales tell of salt and vinegar and the smell
of soft flesh drying out in the heat of a distant
desert. Later, I flick through photographs-
some West Coast sass, where Mormons saw palms
stretched out in prayer, there, where the cactus
have hard skins and hollow centres to hold
the tears of this dying desert where succulents
send signals to the stars while Joshua, tired
of being seen solely as salvation, has blown
a balloon into the hot air to catch for himself
a better view of how the river lies, here,
where every day is a good day or a bad day
or both or neither and no one talks about
what to eat, only that food is a gift and death
makes way for life and nature can have
soft centres to harbour hope while its shell
dries in the heat of an endless summer
and holds beauty in the pierce of every pine
that stabs its skin during the unlimited
possibilities of goodness in every single day.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
A SLIP AWAY FROM BLUE
Eyes a slip of grey from blue in a city not known as home,
on a mountainside to shelter a temple,
she is as welcome as the wind is warm,
she was there before us and we were caught before we knew it.
She carves life, carefully, like the Buddha etched into stone,
the chisel is the compliment to the rock and not the ruin,
an outer expression of inner contentment,
a monastic monk on a meditative mountain and I fall
between the stillness that rests behind each word.
Did her mouth smile
or just her eyes that shade of grey a brush away from blue
as she takes us to her temporary temple of wood and wonder
and shares with us a simple feast on a sweltering day
a treat along the trail, a rest upon the journey,
a moment to bear witness; not to be greater than the Buddha,
not to rise higher but to reflect on what we can become.
We climb over rock and broken earth,
diverge through dead ends that still deliver more light than loss,
we thirst and tire and then take in another treat; another temple, another tree,
a smile from the locals who look and laugh
and wonder why we came and what we will take back.
We travel on and place our tired feet into holds others once held to
as we witness wonders so many others may never see.
We have sat and shared joy like food, laughter like it was love
and coffee like it was an elixir to let us in on the light that lingers over life
and the eyes of the gentle light from Lithuania,
a slip of grey from a sea of blue
seeing the simple synchronicity in all that is true.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. This week’s theme is South Korea and recalling the travels though it and the faces found along the way.
WHEN THE EMPRESS IS REMOVED FROM THE EMPIRE
There is art on walls, winding walls,
in rooms on show with light, luscious light,
and climate controls while she’s side-lined
to the shadows to weep for the darkness
that devours her skin, stuck like tar
and trapped in stone, once tempered
by an artist’s touch now off and absent,
now long grown cold, not being of stone
but breaking bone, while she weeps
beneath polished position on partitioned
pedestal and waits in the shadow of his name
long forgotten from rooms alight with art
on walls, the art of other men,
maybe more remembered
like lands, once considered, now grown
careless in their unions next to nations
who have not nurtured the need to be
noticed for notions long ago set in stone.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of considering all sides of creation
GONE, THE GARDEN
Gone is the garden, we are paved now
in parts no longer potential to growth,
to goodness. And the crow caws
in the corner, flesh festering into feather.
Gone is the garden, we have paved paths
over all that was precious while thinking
thoughtless, if only we’d thought less
about what we wanted and more
about what was needed. And the crow
cowers in the corner, questioning
what has become of its celebrity.
Gone is the garden and we can never
go back; the lock now lost in lyrics
too light, in the songs surrendered
from all that was soul to just sold out.
Gone is the garden, gone to graze
over another galaxy not yet grown
greedy, we are now alien to all
the earth has asked for, strangers
to the simple sand that sweeps the shore,
and stranger still to the starlight
that shines through its last breath burning.
We are the crows, cawing over concrete,
in corners, claws cracking in our chaos
and confused as to where went the worth.
All words and drawings my Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost (from my Joni Mitchell series) for a week of considering creation
THE GARDEN OF THE MOON
There is a shadow,
like a dream too delirious to light with language,
whispering more of what swam away
than what smears this still water
I trudge through below a bitter moon
that has made his garden in this breast of man.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of moon and stars
FROM AFAR
In Space
is the silence so sacred
that stillness is a solace
to the spinning?
Are star lights
like dainty daisies that illuminate the night?
Is the earth
but a beacon of beauty
when viewed from afar,
so far that you cannot hear
Man and his kind
screaming?
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of Stars and Moon
CLOUD’S ILLUSIONS
Gardens grow,
trees get taller,
clouds gather.
I see you
in the movement,
in the air that rushes past time turning,
in the scent of sweetened summer
now swept into corners now shaded.
Clouds gather,
trees get taller,
gardens grow smaller.
Eden is an illusion lost.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This is a repost for a week looking at clouds
