Sea

TO LEARN TO TRUST WITHOUT TURNING

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Time swims out on a tide I wish I could
capture forever on a canvas of comfort,
I drop my shirt and turn, like Orpheus,
and lose hold, sands slide over skin
and seaweed slivers snakelike
along this shore once so unsure;
rough rocks recall all the lava once
eliminated. I stand in all the stillness
that once roared, even as the tides
tempt my feet to come out further
into that bay of blue forever. The sea
is breath taking and days later
all breath seems lost and I wonder
what the wave took with it
and where is my Eurydice now?

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

A poetic week recalling the currents of South Korea, 2018

SUCH MOVEMENT BEHIND A SETTING SO STILL

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Silver sky settles over sun-soaked sea
where we watch the future ripple reflections;
cranes in the corner of Korea coming closer
to a mountain once central to the frame.
Silence and simplicity have never shaken
with such an uncertain stillness.

 

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. This week’s ideas come from last year’s travels through South Korea. I took this photo on Jeju Island in South Korea.

SUMMER’S STORM

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Heaven’s howling!
Summer forsaken, storms converge,
heaven’s howling!
We have flittered too long fowling;
nature forsaken, gods now purge
our wasted ways, our sloth, our splurge,
heaven’s howling!

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost.

SUNKEN SHIPS AT SEA

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And down fell the sun
and drowned within the sea
and rough raged the wreckage
as the sailors tried to flee.

And down fell the sun
as a storm claimed the skies
and water stole the rafters
and silence crushed the cries.

And down fell the sun
as the sirens swam to shore
and laid down the bodies
of the lives that were no more.

And down fell the sun
and a sorrow filled the air
as the sirens sang their song
combing cords through golden hair.

And down fell the sun
as their tears flowed like waves
and they kissed the fallen sailors
on the sand, now their graves.

And down fell the sun
as the sirens said goodbye
to the men mortal men who loved them;
the sea’s sad sirens who cannot die.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a poem from the A Month with Yeats Series

IF ONLY

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We are land birds,
bound birds,
we have made homes
in twisted trees
growing hallow,
growing hard.
We are land birds,
ground birds,
we have been deluded
by illusions
growing careless,
growing cold.
We are land birds,
drowned birds,
in a dying desert
growing doubtful,
going dry.

If only
we had been sea birds,
crowned birds
in a current caressing,
wings wild
at the will of the waves,
weightless instead of weighty,
free falling
on a bed of floating foam,
flexible instead of friable.

If only…

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

From the series A Month With Yeats

Photographs from Barbie exhibition at Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 2016, Paris

THROUGH THE SANDS

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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 labour, 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

From the poetry series A Month with Yeats

CURLS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS

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The breath is stilled, life is sea and sky bound in a blanket
of both current and cloud, moments are just
impressions, reflections of all that has fallen
and all that floats on the future’s feather;
a fragile fluttering to
the left of frame.
Still is
the breath,
thoughts unfurl;
curls of creamy consciousness,
there is darkness, floating, certainly,
but peal it back and there is light lingering
in an unconsciousness we have yet to caress

with consideration.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE CURRENT OF CREAMY COFFEE

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I sink beneath your skin
like sea
sweeping over sand,
you, a thousand grains
glistening
while I wash over you
in warm waves,
your salty sweat

sweet

below my current.

I slip between your lips
like cream
coming into coffee,
our senses fired
like frothed fluid
as we pound passion
into fragile
flesh

once fresh,
now feverish,
once timid,

now tasted

once begun,
we can never go back

You are now the sea
and I the sand,
upon your back,

I am now the coffee
and you have taken

to the cream.

GRAINS OF SAND BENEATH CERULEAN SKIES

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Faith
is fragile,
courage
is not always conclusive
until called,
we do not command the waves
nor comprehend the clouds.
I tell you this sand
will be swept into the sea by night fall,
this baying breath of cyan
neath the stretch of those cerulean skies.
This smooth, salt-licked land
was forged from fire
before you were born,
when vultures had feathers
instead of hands and knives,
when volcanos were all there was to fear.
Faith is fragile,
we cannot see what once was
or what will come to be.
We are not the fire nor the future,
we lie somewhere
below the caelum
searching for a shred of security
on a spot of shore
before the tides return
and we, in turn,
become a grain of sand
that some being will one day look upon
and try to see what is no longer there.
It is ours to be the basalt
or to be
something
better.

IMG_3077

   

All words and photographs (taken on Jeju Island, South Korea) by Damien B. Donnelly

27th Poem for National Poetry Writing Month

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CATCH THE COLOUR

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Sun sets and then rises and in between
we kiss, catch the kisses that come
upon the current, catch the kiss,
the continent is not always ours
to conquer. Tides come and tides
retreat, touch is temporary, flesh
is polished pink below the sensuous sky
but falls from fold like sands in the
glass that hoards the hours, like clouds
that can never be caged. Sun sets
and we blaze our orange blossoms
into passing nights, the night’s gale
calls of connections in the passing,
passion is precious until it too passes.
Sun rises and then falls, catch light;
catch the fire before it drowns
on the water, catch the colours to paint
the coming of the grey, to keep afloat
until the next kiss. Catch colour,
catch kisses before the sun sets,
let worry waste upon the wave,
tomorrow’s light will be blue enough.

    

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

20th poem for National Poetry Writing Month