reflection

PLAYING GAMES

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

When I was a child,
was I thoughtless or taught less
or was there less to think about,
less to love?
Though life was never loveless.
When I was a child,
did I dream less because
I didn’t know any more?
When I was a child,
I lied without knowing
the truth of a lie.

As a man,
the closer I come to the truth,
the more I turn to the dream,
for now there’s less to love,
less to give,
for so much more
has been taken.

When I was a child,
I held trust like it were breath,
ever buoyant,
flirted with faith
as if it were a fountain
that could never fail.

As a man,
breath grows cautious
to capture
and faith has fallen to faithless,
has fallen to fate, to fear.

When I was a child
a puzzle held 10 simple pieces
and when combined
they formed a whole.

Now, as a man,
the pieces are countless
and this puzzle
is far from complete.
When I was a child,
I played like the sun
would never settle,
now playing is paused
as paws are poised
for the running,
running to catch the light
before it falls off a horizon line
they tell me is not a flat drop off,
but this is a truth
I must see for myself
so as to know it’s not a lie.

Time falls
into something, off something
and we are runners in races
whose finish-lines
we don’t want to face.

The truth
is not what we dreamed of
when we knew not
the value of that dream.

As a child,
finish was never a word
that took flight in dreams,
no bird flaps its wings
with desires to meet its end.

I see, in the mirror,
dimly, and sometimes clearly,
pieces that have parted
and the puzzle that remains
between child and man,
between innocence and all the light
that grew dimmer
after the loss,
and between the thinking,
the taking and the being taken.

And somewhere
between it all, I am there,
looking back at who I’ve become.

  

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

BRIGHT LIGHTS IN GARDEN PONDS

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

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

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY; HELLO HOLLAND

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

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All photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Today we are recalling the colours of my previous home town as yesterday a Dutch shipping company came along to move my belongings from my 5th floor/no-lift Paris apartment and start directing them towards Dublin. One Dutch man, one flams man, and me, the irishman, in Paris, speaking Dutch, sweating and running up and down 5 flights of wide, winding and weather worn Parisian wood steps, and doing it all in less than 20 mins!!!

THE DEPTH UNDER THE MOON

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

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

THE CHILD INSIDE THE MAN

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Oh child, sweet child, sleeping so
beneath these big shoes and ties
knotted to a life of change and choice,
but we had to run, had to keep going,
didn’t we have grow up so quickly;
stand up, show up, give up, pay up.
Oh child, sleeping child, so sweet
beneath this bitter battle we must wade
through, the waves come not solely
on the current, not timely like the tides
but in the solitude, in the silence
we thought to be a comfort, I feel you
twist through the dreams you still dream,
that I have lost hold of, that I have let
slip from a grasp now older, less bolder.
But you, dear child, sweetly sleeping
as I make movements meant to be manly,
meaning to be mature, how I hear
your voice, amid the louder, broader,
vulgar tones beyond the preying
playgrounds of concrete corporations
and communal conformity, yours
so soft and gentle amid the riots
and the roars, yours so soothing
amid all that is smothering. I see you
too sometimes, in the mirror, briefly,
a spark of what was once a projection, now
but a reflection; wide eyed
and hearty of hope, I see you, laughing
at my troubles, calling me to come play,
to see the adventure in the danger,
to see the impermanence of these little
interruptions that come a calling.
Oh child, sweet child who painted
pictures to make the grey days
more grand, who penned poems
to let the pain find its place to perish
on the page instead of in the person.
Oh child, sleeping child of my youth,
how much I still have to learn from you.

   

All words by Damien B Donnelly. School photo aged possibly 5.

From the series A Month With Yeats

CONNECTIONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

Water
Silent
Stillness
Reflection. Connection
Make the connection
Elements
Water Earth Air
I can be fire
The fire

I walk on water
I dream I walk on water
I see stillness
I dream I walk on the stillness of the water
I hear the silence
I am the silence dreaming of the stillness that walks on the water
I am the reflection
I am the silent reflection of the dream that once walked on the stillness of the water.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a old post, reposted.

RUNNING BY THE RIVER OF THOUGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

I slipped off to the edge of the city,
this morning, where the stream found a stillness
and the air a crispness that kept confusion at a distance.

I stood beneath the bridge
that took the traffic and its tension far from me
and found the swimming swan rising higher in the stream,
the follow on from the floods that now seem so far
with these skies of blue, speaks of colour
in a park, on a Friday, in February,
where an artist once came to paint.

A park, in Paris, on an island,
by the Seine where the waters wash with colour
when you look beyond the shadows, a new rise
basking in the glory of what was once regarded
as great, by those who regarded the value of greatness.

Straight and tall, shiny structures shoot up,
like soldiers, by a stream ever in movement,
ever following the route, today’s design will be tomorrow’s sign
of an age the river has outrun.
I see trees towering tall in waters,
once rising, now falling, still strong, still weathering
the storm, still willing to be remembered, like an artist
captures beauty, captured beauty, in a park,
once, on a Sunday in a time since parted.

Nature is not in our control,
nature is willing to withstand all our wilfulness,
will not drown in these days of destruction,
will not worry, as we do, will not bend
but will let life flow around it,
in hope, in harmony.

In a park, on a Friday,
on an island, by the river,
in jogging shoes and sweatpants,
I ran through days already distanced
and tried to make connections between the road
winding onwards and the trees rising upwards, like the water,
rushing onwards like time, ever at play with its participants,
with all that it connects, with benches for the breathless
to recapture breaths and wheels
to help us follow the stream.

And in the windows,
I saw reflections of those towering trees,
never to be forgotten, blue of sky in the beauty of light,
light and harmony, colour and shade, captured in what is new,
a hint of what knows the bounty of age.

And on the river, by the park, on a Friday, in Paris,
I stopped and saw my reflection in the gentle waters
and in the waters saw colour, colour and light,
by a boat, in a park, in a city ever changing,
where an artist came to capture it all on a Sunday,
a simple Sunday, not a Friday but a Sunday, searching
for something between the shadow and light,
between all that will fade and all
the rest that cannot stay.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly