High on a hilltop you rise above your age
and you offer your wisdom of the ancients
(hush, I say, to hear the humble) to ears new
to these old whispers that are now as woven
to the earth as the tress rooted below it, as you
are driven now to plod along this mountain path,
a former teacher and now caretaker of the history
time might have let slide but your mind will not
let fade while I wonder where I was a year ago,
a month ago, a day ago? High on a hilltop
we lean in and listen as you describe what we
have recently found indecipherable. And again
we follow footsteps imprinted into the soil.
We take the right side and bow, thrice, as memory
recalls the emperor taking the central path
while the guards, armed with their faith in the form
of the dragon, harmony in the form of their music
and strength in the size of their sword, ward off
the demons and welcome in the inner light.
There is light here, gentle light, a subtle light
to caress the skin, to sink within as we mount
and meditate on how we got here, to this hill,
to this land, to this life, to this breath. High
on the hilltop we take in the scent of incense
as the chimes ring out to remind us we are not
one, alone, but one single part of the whole
and we bow again thrice and follow the flow
of the stream that knows more about its route
than we ever be able to know about our own.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photographs from Beomeosa Temple, Busan, South Korea and special thanks to this wonderful man who was on the bus with us and then gave us a private tour

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/the-caretaker

Humble at the heart of this landscape, this dreamscape
I’m training through, I’m taken by its blossoming breast;
forests firing up like volcanos that have shun their rest,
luscious leaves of lava sweep through cities, for man
has no control over the mountain just as nature has no
defence against the molten flame, as fiery as the kimchi
I am trying to come to terms with. This one’s a little more
digestible, you tell me but I know you’re teasing. Beyond
our feasting over meals bigger than our bellies but smaller
than our budgets, skyscrapers attempt to shoot up over
mammoth mountains, a competition man has really no time
to master while in homes, humble, calmness is harboured
to counteract consumer clutter. Humble resides in the heart
of this Republic once ravaged, often raped, now a melting
pot of mystery; many foreign feet of soldiers stamping
have dug their shadow into all that now shines. Museums
have wings for Japan and China and for those Mongols
who molested these mountains still standing, still growing,
still calling us to come and climb and see the world from
another point of view. Tourists now willingly trudge through
tunnels dug out by that luscious lava, we take turns taking
pictures and laugh as its resemblance to a giant turd. We
come to the call of the mountains, all sweaty chested
and dosed in awe, my heart is held at this height, it trembles
beneath this fragile flesh and I hold on tighter to each grip
of grandeur and wonder how long my footprints will be
cemented in this soil. From here, high above the crow’s nest,
where Buddha rests with all that remains, where fortresses
have been forged and since forgotten, these cities sweep
away from who they were and show themselves as who
they are becoming. We are not who we were but what we
have made out of what has been, in dusted days, done to us.

All words and photographs of South Korea by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/humble-at-the-heart