I was once silent
Amid the noise,
Shadowing the world in stillness
While all else-
But I-
Found its motion.
I watched as dreams
Slipped swiftly
Through my fumbling hands-
Hands powerless to awaken my slumber to the realm of reality.
I’d been held
And felt nothing in that very touch-
Nothing but the visceral arousal of man
At his most primal.
I’d seen a lifetime of possibilities
With single glances
And built worlds in my mind
Before blinking them away.
I held a man’s hand
In a taxi
As we raced through a foreign city-
Once my home-
While my mind ran to thoughts
Of someone else
Before remembering a touch, from long before.
Once, I circled the globe and returned home
To find that home
Was but a word-
A word that wakes a memory
To plot a beginning,
As weightless
And mobile
As the drifting traveler.
I am-
Like you all-
No more than a burnt-out,
Used-to-be,
Fading star,
Sparkling in front of you
Although my future’s 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 saw you in the midst of these feelings
Early one morning
While December raced towards fairy lights
And tinsel toe-
Snowflakes speckling you in white-
An untouched canvas of pure potential,
No longer revolting in your bureaucratic bundle
Of mass and confusion-
While scarf-clad, gloved-up,
Red-nosed,
Shoulder-shrugging Frenchmen
Tutted as they wedged their way
Through the Metro turnstiles
That my blonde haired friend had just disappeared through-
Journeying back to her beginning
To start anew
And leaving me with no more than the distant memory
Of her laughter
That swept off on a breeze
And swirled around trees
Whose branches bared down to their earthbound roots.
No more the sharing of days and nights,
Mixing cocktails to our own design,
Toasting birthdays in Chinatown
For April’s fairest fool
Or surprise visits from friends
To break the daily routine.
No more lunches at Lina’s
With sandwiches too big to finish,
Dinners in white wolfed restaurants-
Leaving notes on toilet mirrors
For cute boys
On far flung tables.
No more spinning of bottles
And tempting of firemen
And late night parties
With boy bands
And dart players.
No more the sound
Of her click-clacking heels
Heard in the distance
Long before her arrival
Into that bar where we worked
And thought of as that very word-
Home.
She’d been the small town girl
More grown up than her years
And yet still a child as white
As the snow now falling.
As I saw you like this-
My dear city-
I wondered
How much more
Would fall away from me
And what else would take its place
As swishing snows let teared icicles stream down my face
While icy crystals fell from your skies-
Washing to white those famed grey rooftops
And smokeless chimneys
That had ingrained themselves
So indelibly
On my mind,
All the while hiding from me your cobbled streets
Through which my feet had sailed,
Feet that now disappeared
Slowly in the snow-white earth,
Leaving me to question where I’d be
When spring uncovered me
And pushed me back-
Once more-
Into the noise
And motion
And storm
Which I’d stopped that day to watch
In stillness
While another fine friend
Fell away.
I had once been silent
Amid the noise
But on that morning-
Speckled in white,
All was silent but for my heart
That raced with the beat of life.
Damien B. Donnelly 
