Tide

BY THE TIDE

/ 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

STILL A SWAY TO THE FINAL ANCHOR

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Sea claims what man can no longer cradle
but time’s tales can be freed from nasty nets
when the wreck is beyond want, when the cable
has been cut and we come to the call of the current.
Rough becomes rust becomes wrecked becomes ruin,
might becomes memory. Day is done but night unfolds
tales of tides that were tamed, slim seas that harboured
heavy hopes in trusted holds. We dive and then differ
on the return, are undone, unmasked, back to bone-
a battered beauty, once a witness to the wild waves.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Written as part of the Cobh Writers and Readers #PoetryPrompt featured on Twitter. Do drop by and join in the creative distraction. @CobhWR

THE IDENTITY OF AN ISLANDER

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

 

Entity. Identity. I identify. Running gives no reason
until you run out of places to hide. Identity. I identify.
I recognise now what it means to be connected. A continent
can be chaos. An island doesn’t have to isolate. I. Island.
I can identify as an entity of this island. I didn’t hear them
telling me the truth. I didn’t know they knew me before I did.

I tore through tracks; teenager, twenties, thirties, I am tired
now, my trainers have taken to the tide. I am sand again,
ready to be cast upon beach, I want to be a grain in this garden
I was ground upon. I was barren of breath. I choked, drowned
in an ocean that wasn’t mine to begin with, we can bare too much
as well as being blind to all there is to see. I see now, this entity.
I was split once, by what I dreamed of and what I already had.
I see now, how this island, this entity, held my identity. Whole.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly