Movement, into open,
this Earth is now an ocean
and our toes eager to taste the tide again.
Roads are waves,
cars are accompanying dolphins,
schools of fish, cruising outside of classrooms.
Movement, into open,
we are astronauts
teaching ourselves how to stabilise our legs
on old streets that come to us
like giant steps onto new moons.
Motion sickness
triggered in these minor moves
we used to make blindfolded
and now take, breathless.
We are bouncing Ariels and Armstrongs.
Movement, into open
with that far field still stuck to the sole,
masked now
with vaccined assurances
where before we had a hat and that hurry.
Minor movements we are making;
the universe no longer as big
as a 20 minute bus ride that drops us off
in leaps of elated exhaustion.
And so, even more,
we say thank you to the drivers of busses
and trains and taxis and check-out assistants
and shop keepers and sales teams
and chemists and nurses and doctors
and the girl who stabbed me yesterday
with Pfizer and a 15 minute
pause to preserve.
movement
KEPT IN RECESSES OR THROWN TO DUST
Old wheels still turn through new miles.
We are more than we look- muscle
is not only what it takes to transform.
We skirt old roads now well educated
on my departure, it’s not just the seasons
that circle back on themselves. I’ve left
parts of me in every other recess in order
to recognize the parts I portrayed, later on,
when the route returns me to worn road.
I peddle at times without predetermination,
you cannot lose the track if you haven’t
traced its outline, beforehand. The road too
is more than just a route as we roar along
its rigor despite its restriction. I was never
happier than when taking the dirt track-
scattering over-weighted thoughts
of who I was upon the disrupted dust.
Old wheels still turn through new miles.
All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly
THE RABBIT AND THE OXYMORON
I am still so you can move
You twitch
when you think I’m about to turn
I view you as delight and you define me
as demonic
You glow of late
like the recently planted grass
in the side garden of sunlight that used to only sit
in shade
Coming closer to brave with every beat
you come out faithful to the evening’s song
when shadows are longer and stiller
and skip over blossoming blade
I make lists of where to walk and how to step
later, afterwards
so as not to thread over the freedom
you press upon that patch
of newly grown blades of soft grass.
Blades of soft grass. Movement amid all the stillness.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
PERMISSIBLE TO ASK?
I take the boat out on the water,
rowing out to come into the stillness
in this place where space is still displaced.
Chez moi, c’est quoi, c’est où ?
Il est permis de demander ?
Merci, I say, still, when I should just
stay still, like this water where I row out,
stretching limb, exhausted, after the search
that brought me back, to pacify.
Pacifier- je peux le toucher, presque…
but these movements, however measured,
deprive peace from pacify, remove the stillness
from all this space I am, still,
struggling to reach. Mais.
Priver, je ne veux pas, non, non plus.
Je ne regarderai pas mon nombril, pas comme avant.
Moi- I shed who I was, am, along with time
but not breath- I lost breath, once- tu te souviens,
tu étais là, non ? Oui ! Tu ne te souviens pas.
Regarde ce bateau-
hope is a delicate placement of desire upon wish,
of wood upon water.
Je suis le bois, ou non ? C’était toi avant,
Mais tu as été viré. Viré. Fired. Sacked. Sack.
Meanings can give way to so many misunderstandings,
like translations- so much gets lost in the turning,
in the movement, going out and coming in,
with each row
further out. On the water.
Sometimes thought is not what is needed but stillness
within a world that cannot stop.
Arrête. Stop
but that word is too final.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
TIDES FOR CHANGE, HAIKU
Tides roll in, roll out,
waves recall not where they’ve been
but to where they’re bound.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
BOOKENDS; ALL THE WATER CARRIES OFF WITH IT
There will always be a part of me
standing by the water’s edge,
watching how much of us
got washed away and wondering
how much more sunk so deep
below the surface that it is now
a captive more to your careful concrete
than that ever coldly cutting current.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
This has been a month of saying goodbye to Living with Paris in order to move on. And so Stephen Sondheim comes to mind and the lyrics of the song Move On from the musical Sunday in the Park with George, based on Georges Seurat…
‘Stop worrying where you’re going, move on…
look at what you want, not at where you are,
not at what you’ll be…
I want to move on, I want to explore the light
I want to know how to get through, through to something new,
something of my own, move on…’
Here’s to getting through to the light and the newness and moving on. See you all on the other side…
Dami xx
BOOKENDS; TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Coming in
is easy.
Learning when to leave
is an art
not easily understood.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This month is about getting ready to leave Paris, for good. Today will also be my last day as pattern maker at the Paris fashion design atelier of & Other Stories and who can say what the future will bring but, (to wickedly steal a show tune) because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
BOOKENDS; A CITE OR A SHADOW
A city and a shadow, a choice; to stay or leave,
to concede and crown myself as conquered and then be crushed
or to continue on as committed commuter,
to be complacent
or constantly curious for more light so as to comprehend the darkness,
to break down the barrier between all there is to fear
and come, face to face, with all there is to be.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This month is about looking back to see how I can move forward. A final goodbye to Paris before moving to Ireland.
BOOKENDS; STUMBLING THROUGH THE DREAM, WIDE AWAKE
I was silent once amid the noise, stumbling through smothering,
a bare canvas cradling nothing in arms that had promised everything.
I circled the globe once to find that home was just a word,
a word that makes a memory to plot a beginning,
not weighted but weightless.
I am, like you all, no more than a burnt-out, used-to-be, fading star,
somehow sparkling in front of you though my future has already faded
somewhere light years away.
As I hurtle through this voyage, my eyes fall sleepy, looking for rest,
looking, always, for the rest of me.
I am the sparrow, lost to its nest, forever flying in circles, catching
your scent on every other breeze with the hope it will, one day,
fly me home on your courant d’air.
For all that I have become, it is because of all you’ve shown me,
for all that I lack, it is everything I left in our bed.
Sleep softly on it.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This month is about looking back at my life in Paris in order to say goodbye and this poem is a collage of a group of poems I wrote just after i left Paris, the first time, in 1999.
BOOKENDS; A SHADE CAUGHT IN THE SHADOW
I walk in circles now, following paths forward that crossover
roads I once considered. Time trips onward but no longer
is the line straight, no longer a captive of direct. This light
is lit now like a last lap, here, in this place once prized,
once positioned next to pride on platforms now too proud
to be passed off as plausible. I’m on the count-down to lift-off
while still turning corners teased with reflections that once shone
with the shade of an old shadow long since shed.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This month is about looking back in order to move on, shedding old shadows to make room for fresh frames, a farewell to Living with Paris
Damien B. Donnelly 