THIS HISTORY OF A HOME

30/06/202030/06/2020 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

I live now
in various shadows
and only a few whose forms I’d distinguish.
By a round tower
on a little hill
at the far end of a short road
I can read the names of the first ones
who named this place
as a home,
I’ve no faces for these folk
who were whispers even to my own mother,
the mother and father of her father
who is now but a whisper to me.
The bag man he called me
till he passed on when I was 5.
I remember
saying goodbye
to his bald shiny head
in a dark room with brown walls
and a glass atrium you walked through to get to him.
Now he walks beyond the glass
while I’ve come back to the rooms
that once held his warm voice and soft shuffle
along with his wife, my gran, my nana
with her cardigans
and concern and coppers
for the collections in the church
and later, in the summer-
for outings to the slot machines
where the train comes
to an end at the edge of the sea.
All things have endings, even waves crash.
Nana is now
in the grounds of that church
she gave her coppers to, next to her man,
her Pop, real name Bernard- my middle name.
All things come back
like days
after darkness,
names that we lost
and laughter after loss
and then mothers to their mothers,
like mine did when Dad lost us,
and sons to their mothers,
like I did when Paris said adieu.
Adieu- to God, it means. Funny way to say goodbye.
All things come home, like me now
in this house,
now my mothers,
once home to her mother’s sacred heart
and her father’s devilment,
once the home to my mother’s grandparents
and her brothers and sisters
and the cats and the dogs
and the odd chicken
they kept in the pig-cot that never held a pig
where the boys stored all the pears
they’d pilfered from the orchard.
We planted
rhubarb last week
and a sprig of wild spinach
I’d plucked from the edge of the savage sea
in the back garden of this little house
where the shadows watch over us
in various forms
that I’m trying to distinguish.

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

BY THE TIDE

16/05/2020 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

There, by the water’s edge, where kids collect sand in pails as if a piece of plastic can save time, he watches docking ships report their findings- new worlds beyond the old waves he never managed to rise above. I had the urge for going, he recalls saying once, when he could run faster than those kids who cannot yet count time. There, by the edge of all that cannot be measured, old dreams dreamt in younger days float out on a wave that drowns the acrid air while he comes to regard the castles his grandkids have captured in the sinking sand.

The sand is to shore
as the ship is to the sea
dreams rest in between.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THROUGH THE SANDS, Day 7 of A Month With Yeats

07/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 14 Comments

Day 7 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge and today’s inspirational quote from WB is: ‘…stars, grown old in dancing silver-sandalled on the sea, sing in their high and lonely melody…’

To join in the creativity or just to discover Jane’s gentle genius, her blog link is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/category/poetry-2/

My poem today is called THROUGH THE SANDS

And when they danced

she would hold him, her

perfume by his face, his

hands as her strength

as they waltzed through

their current as the tides

swept the shore, through

love and labor, to the first born,

still born, through the twins

who stopped the tears

and the girls who tied

the bows as the sands slipped

through time and the pace

became a quick step, through

the hands that held and those

hips that swayed through

the melody they were making

as they danced through

waves of washing houses

into homes, children into

strangers; rarely calling

and barely remembering

but on they danced as red

locks swept into silver strands,

as full head turned to bald head

on an older head as they turned

to the music now made

in the memory, till she left him,

finally, one morning in may,

as he rose to the sunlight but

she had lost to the moonlight

and so he built her an alter

of sea shells and sentiments

and now he turns, alone, across

the sands still slipping,

as the stars plot a path for him

to reach her in eternity.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

A BLONDE BIRD IN FLIGHT

13/04/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

And off she ran
a blonde bird in flight,
a bright baby bird
into the night,
focused and flapping
as if chasing the morning,
as if orchestrating the trees,
as if transported by the breeze
flying over fields of youth,
twists and turns and truth,
folds of frivolous folly,
courting clouds in curiosity,
looking for a reason
to rhyme upon,
a reason to ride on

and she will fly
in spiralling circles
that surround you
before circling you
in widening widths,
further stretches,
further afield,
a blonde bird
but blue to you
and the agony of letting her go
and the ecstasy of having her back
but she is bound
with those big eyes,
those beautiful eyes,
to brighter breezes,
to warmer beaches,
bound for bigger things
like the grass growing
over fading footsteps,
like the trees
towering over ticking time,
like the clouds
wild to the will of the wind,

to far flung lands she will fly
as you sigh,
to other fields,
to foreign fields
to set down findings,
feelings, foundations,
familiarities foreign to you,
foolish to you
but faithful and fruitful to her,
a home in other hills,
a happiness to harbour
in other homes

and then one day
when the breeze beckons
you catch her scent on your shoulder
where it wasn’t there before
and you will find her
once again
in a field familiar to you both.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SHADOW AND LIGHT

24/11/201404/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

At 22,
I knew as much of myself
As the exotic world
I’d just found
With streets willing me
To walk them
Witness them
And be wooed by them.
My twenties
Had typically emerged
As a decade to be a no one;
An empty slate to be carved upon
Before my thirties would find me
And shout me with substance.

I’d lost parents
Before knowing them; given up
In a sacrifice of selflessness
Almost incomprehensible
And found
In the arms of another mother
A love that would prove
Incontestable.

I searched,
During infantile years,
Amid childish ego
And innocence,
For connections
To those around me;
The mother
Loved so unequivocally
And the father
Aged in aggression,
With a gap too great to bridge
And so I turned to walk
Shadowy miles of roads in my head,
Clumsily cramming teenage years
With classically confusing
Childish dribble,
Trying to sound like a grown-up
In size 6 shoes,
Feeling different,
Unknown,
And, more often than not,
Undiscovered.

Finally,
I braved knocks on dark doors-
Frequented bars in back lanes
And alley ways,
Away from the eyes of the pious
Whose ignorance
Bullied the boys
With different desires.
I kissed
My first boy
At 18
Behind a sofa
As excited as a child
On Christmas morning,
Finding courage
Behind shades and acceptance
In a community I had become
No longer
Soul member of.

Cuddling and kissing progressed,
Over time, to sweaty,
Fumbling, amateur athletics
Behind the lights
Replacing shame and catholic guilt
With newfound feelings of freedom
As I began
To notch my way
Onto bedposts
Of various conquests.

Between courtings
I often cried
For lovers in whose arms
I should never have laid
And wondered why I ran
From others in whose embrace
I should have stayed,
All but memories
Patterned into the tissue
Of my sleeve-worn,
Still learning, heart,
Cherished moments
That wished to be relived
Along with others
That longed for time to fade.

I had assumed these
To be bruises
As I fell upon these new
Foreign streets
But have recognised them since
To be no more than lifelines,
Imprints, echoes merely of
Shadow and light.

They were all
Important diversions
Along the road,
Pivotal points
Goading me
Into this very direction.
Some of them
Fell away by your banks
And others settled in,
Ingrained themselves like streets
That mapped themselves
Out in front of me
And gradually,
Over time,
Carved their way
Indelibly
Inside of me.

RAIN IN SUMMER

05/11/201404/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

In the summers heat
The raindrops fall
As the dust of August
Runs down the wall.
Inside the house
Lie endless cries,
Broken hearts
And comfortless toys.
A child on the outside
But silent within,
No one to play with,
No reason to grin.

Sadness falls
Like rain in winter,
Leaves in autumn
And the all too little
The hope of spring.

All she wants
Is to wish on the stars,
To fly with Venus
And twinkle at Mars,
To spread her wings
And take to the skies
To stay above clouds
Where the rain never cries.