moon

TWO NORTHERN MAGNETS

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We scold,

even at frightening distances,
you burn, there, at the centre of
the sun
and I roar back across the stars at you,
from this comet that cannot commit,
at how you could run
so cold.
Our landings

were nothing less than lumpy-
you wanted to shine so I caught you that sun
and I wanted to amplify time
so you considered for me
the moon
but were already consumed
by your own blaze
and I caught this cursed comet in its place.
I think of you

as I finally defy time
on the tail end of this burning star.
We lacked the gravity needed
to bring a balance to
any orde
but we each held magnets
that repelled the other to the far ends
of space.
In the distance

I see something great
that might be your light
and smile back

before I spit

across the sky
and wonder if it’s enough
to put you out.
We scold still,

even at these great distances. 

   

All words and photographs by Damien. B. Donnelly

WHEN SEARCHING FOR WHO WE WILL BE, AFTERWARDS

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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

BRIGHT LIGHTS IN GARDEN PONDS

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Stars dance at the bottom of the back garden
where the rain waits in shallow ponds
for the earth to lick it dry.

Reflections are dependent on position-

you cannot catch the moon lying on the ground
from the front window where the sun lingered
a little longer today than the tear stained back
where stars tickle the empty earth we’d since weeded
while the moonlight’s absorbed by the shallows
never deep enough to hold the right answers
to the questions the imagination is too distracted
to decipher.

Breakable is dependent too on position and how we transition-

will the earth lick the stars from callous pond,
here, in the back garden while I sit trance-like,
in this window of the empty sky,
turning this piece of plastic over in my hands
to pacify panic, counting the intakes and holding…
one, two, three, four and then out… releasing
for a second longer like the sun that lingered earlier,
in the front, while I was out digging holes
in the earth at the back,

trying to get closer to the cure-

plunging pressured palms down into that hellish heat
to dry this pond of trapped starlight, allowing them
to rise again instead of dying out here,
on this empty earth.

There are times I want to quit this place, these concerns,
this kitchen, this garden, this land, this planet,
this moonlight and feel what it’s like to burn
through eternity and not just lay here,
waiting to be licked.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

FINDING OUR WAY

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I woke early, attention tethered to the bird call
as they build their nests within the walls
we once lit fires between. Regardless of season
we must all find ways to shelter and survive.

I ran early, out into the open morning where air
was still yawning and I thought about sleep
and what it takes to catch a dream at the far end
of the wood when you aren’t sure of the way back.

I climbed the slow hill, with flattened breath
and caught two moons under the still grey light
kindly carved into the edges of memory
in this growing garden we water with tears.

I came early, to ponder position by tall towers
no longer watchful with feet that haven’t settled
while the sun, I cannot see, casts its light
onto two white moons above a thousand eyes

no longing seeing.

I woke early and still came up upon the moon.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

A BLACK CANVAS

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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

SHORT STORIES OF FEAR; THE MONSTER IN THE MAN

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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

THE GARDEN OF THE MOON

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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

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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

 

 

THE DEPTH UNDER THE MOON

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Moonlight
melts
languidly
on liquid lakes

like suds on dishes
like snow on windows

like thicker skin over age-old scars.

Moonlight
floats
momentarily
on rippling reflections

like the tingle after kisses
like the scent after sex

like the pain after parting.

Moonlight
flirts on the water

to divine
whether the depth

is worth the dive.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Repost for a week of Moons and Stars

A WHITE WING RISING

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A starlit day,
on a distant shore,
as if summer had sent it
swarming like a snowflake;
silken wings to summon the sunset,
a white moth to raise a sweet soul
departing.
And there,
as a star was added,
the bright moon was kissed
in berry blush as the sun settled
beneath the lake where the lost trout
turned through tresses of silver dancing
and he smiled at his love, since lost,
now glimmering
in eternity.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is from the series A Month with Yeats