May 2025 – Page 3 – Northcoast Antiquarian

Where the Furies Pause

by Donald S. Yarab

In myth, the Furies pursue the guilty. In this meditative poem, they do not chase or condemn, but pause—witnesses to memory, silence, and the uncertain balance between reckoning and reprieve. Beneath the yew, they wait—not gone, not appeased, but listening.

Vincent van Gogh, Trunk of an Old Yew Tree (1888)
Oil on canvas, 91 × 71 cm
London, Helly Nahmad Gallery — **Vincent van Gogh, *Trunk of an Old Yew Tree* (1888)**
Oil on canvas, 91 × 71 cm
London, Helly Nahmad Gallery

“Necdum illum aut trunca lustrauerat obuia taxo / Eumenis…”
— Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10

“Nor yet had the Fury met him, bearing the lustral yew…”
— Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10 (adapted translation)

As darkness descends and light abates,
The Furies wake at the turning of fates.
No horn is blown, no omen flies—
Only the hush where judgment lies.

They come not crowned, but cloaked in ash,
With broken names and eyes that flash.
Not wrath alone, but what endures—
The weight of memory that never cures.

They walk where silence used to sleep,
Where secrets rot and letters bleed.
The breath of dusk is cold and tight—
A wound reopens in the night.

By yews they pause, where death takes root,
In soil grown thick with ash and fruit.
The bark is split with silent cries,
The rings record what speech denies.

They do not speak, but still the trees
Murmur of trespass in the breeze.
The wind forgets its mournful tone—
As if the world waits to atone.

A shadow stirs, but does not fall;
A light withdraws, but leaves a call.
No hand is raised, no doom is cast—
And yet the pulse runs through the past.

The air is thick with what might be:
A breaking, or a turning key.
The Furies halt—but do not sleep.
And from the yews, the silence… deep.

So still they stand beneath the yew—
The Furies veiled in dusk’s soft hue.
Its needles dark, its berries red,
It shelters both the quick and dead.

They neither strike nor turn away,
But hold the hush at break of day.
Their eyes are dark, their purpose blurred—
As if they wait to hear a word.

Credo Quia Gustavi: A Theology of Garlic

By Donald S. Yarab

**Vincent van Gogh, *Red Cabbages and Garlic* (1887)**
Oil on canvas, 50 cm × 64.5 cm (20 in × 25.4 in)
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Garlic, I proffer, is a proof for the existence of God.

This is no idle remark, but a sincere offering—a theophanic gesture. The proposal is made in good faith and deserves to be received in kind. For garlic, humble yet exalted, reveals more than flavor; it unveils mystery.

Not through syllogism, but through savor. Not by argument, but by aroma. It is theology by way of the tongue and nose, where the sacred reveals itself not in thunder, but in the quiet sizzle of clove meeting oil. This is not mere indulgence. This is revelation.

Let us consider, then, a brief Credo in four parts:

1. The Argument from Delight
Garlic transforms. It does not merely flavor—it exalts. Beans become feast, bread becomes blessing. That a bulb, buried in earth and gnarled like a relic, should yield such joy when crushed or roasted is, in itself, an argument for a benevolent architect.

2. The Argument from Simplicity and Complexity
Each clove is a marvel—humble in form, abundant in gift: it offers flavor, healing, preservation, and, in many traditions, spiritual protection against malignant forces. What mind, save one both divine and wise, would endow so much in so little?

3. The Argument from Devotion
Revered across cultures—French, Chinese, Italian, Greek—garlic is not bound by nation or creed. It is a kind of aromatic ecumenism. What else commands such near-universal reverence without edict or doctrine?

4. The Argument from Absence
To taste a dish where garlic should have been is to feel its absence as void. It is theology by negation—apophatic cuisine. Like divine silence, its absence speaks volumes.

Thus we say, without irony:
Credo quia gustavi.
I believe because I have tasted.

And behold, it was very good.

The First Wonder of the Day

By Donald S. Yarab

Rotary dial wall phone — Photo by Rafael Duran on Pexels.com

What is the most mundane thing we can contemplate as we begin our day?

If we can find wonder in that—and I am certain that we can—then we may find both purpose and beauty in the entirety of the day.

So, as I rise, I may peer out the bedroom window. The sun may be shining, or the rain falling softly, greying the morning light. Either is wondrous. Or perhaps I catch sight of the automobiles scurrying along the street. What a marvel—internal combustion engines and electric motors, their complexity tucked beneath the quiet hum of daily ritual. When my grandfather was born, such machines were not part of his everyday world.

I may repair to the bathroom and avail myself of indoor plumbing—another miracle. I recall that my other grandfather, raised on a farm in his teenage years, spent that portion of his youth relying on an outhouse, as well as drawing water from a pump. What comfort we possess without second thought.

In the kitchen, I open the refrigerator. Its quiet, steady hum speaks of a world preserved—meats, fruit, leftovers—all waiting in climate-controlled stillness. My grandmothers told me of the icebox, and the blocks of ice melting slowly with the day. What we now take for granted once required vigilance and care.

I may glance at the telephone—though now it is not on the wall, but in my pocket, answering to no cord. And yet I remember the telephone of my earliest childhood: one line, fixed to the wall, with a coiled cord and no screen. No call waiting. No voicemail. Only the ring, the voice, the taking turns. We managed. We even cherished it.

And when we sought knowledge, we turned to the bookshelf. A full set of encyclopedias, already well out of date, stood like solemn guardians of learning. We flipped through pages, cross-referenced entries, sometimes found what we sought. And if not—we went to the library. The card catalog was our compass, the stacks our pilgrimage. The answers came more slowly, but the seeking deepened our understanding.

I remember it all: a single television with three channels that went dark each night, a record player, a radio that belonged to my father and was not to be touched. I wore hand-me-down clothes from older cousins on the first day of school, and my mother sewed my pants with love and care. And we felt rich.

And now? A world of convenience surrounds us—lights, warmth, water, knowledge, sound, connection—available in an instant. But it is easy to forget that each of these was once impossible, then improbable, then a luxury.

Today, some cry out in anger for a past that never truly existed. They long for a myth, not a memory. But I find more strength, and far more truth, in simply being present—and being grateful.

To begin the day in wonder is to begin it rightly. For wonder is not the fruit of novelty, but of attention. It is not found in having more, but in seeing more deeply.

To begin in wonder is to begin in gratitude. And to begin in gratitude is to begin in truth.

The Orange Sentinels

In honor of the seasonal watchmen of the Ohio Turnpike

My friend John W. called me while he was traveling the Ohio Turnpike and noted the abundance of orange barrels delaying his journey. I quickly quipped that he should be happy the Orange Sentinels, for which Ohio is justly famed, were guarding his way. And then I composed the following short poem in his honor—and in honor of the Sentinels lining his path:

The Orange Sentinels
Each spring, they bloom—
Not in gardens, but on shoulders and medians,
Where asphalt warms and groans beneath the sun.
Tall and mute, they stand in solemn rows,
Garbed in Day-Glo regalia,
Their mission unclear, their presence unyielding.
Some say they guard progress, others delay.
To us, they are the high priests of frustration,
An order eternal, sanctioned by no god we trust.
Ohio’s own bitter blossom.

Betwixt Dawn and Dusk: A Meditation on Life and Dream

Preface

The first lines of this poem came to me in the night—those strange hours when thought and dream pass like shadows through the mind. I awoke briefly, not fully, and the phrase lingered: between and betwixt dawn and dusk… and the inverse, between and betwixt dusk and dawn. I held onto it until morning, when I set it down in full light. The poem that followed is a meditation on those intervals—the thresholds of consciousness and the veils through which the soul moves in its waking and its dreaming.

What begins as a reflection on the daily arc—from sunrise to sunset—soon turns inward, toward the more uncertain passage between dusk and dawn, where memory, time, and identity unravel and reweave. The Heraclitean epigraph provides the key: “The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.” Yet even that distinction, perhaps, is not so firm as it seems.

The accompanying painting—Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket—mirrors the poem’s atmosphere: its drift between form and dissolution, its reverent wondering, its silence punctuated by brief illumination. Together, word and image ask not what life is, but whether it is lived or dreamed—and what remains of us in either case.

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
James McNeill Whistler (c. 1872–1877)
Oil on canvas, 60.3 × 46.6 cm (23.7 × 18.3 in)
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit — James McNeill Whistler, *Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket*
c. 1872–1877 | Oil on canvas, 60.3 × 46.6 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit

Betwixt the Spheres

by Donald S. Yarab

“The waking have one common world,
but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.”
—Heraclitus, Fragment 89

Betwixt the dawn’s gold-burnished, trembling rise,
And evening’s hush where embered echoes gleam,
A soul drifts outward under waking skies—
Or inward, through the latticework of dream.

Morning declares the world as firm and real,
Noon lays its claim in certainties and fire,
Yet twilight draws the veil we cannot feel,
And sings the hush of unfulfilled desire.

The hours fall like leaves from unseen trees,
Their passage soft, impermanent, and strange.
Some name it life, who walk it by degrees—
While others call it dream, and feel no change.

So tell me, when the final light has flown,
And silence hangs, unbroken and immense—
Was it a road we walked, and called our own,
Or but a fleeting spark in dream’s pretense?

But what of time when sun has slipped from sight,
And stars drift forth like seeds of the unknown?
What voice is heard within the hush of night,
When all the world lies still, and we—alone?

Between and betwixt the dusk and morning’s grace,
A different kind of being comes to bloom:
Where shadows speak, and time forgets its place,
And long-dead voices gather in the gloom.

In sleep, the veil grows thin, the borders bend,
And hours bleed into realms that none can chart.
The soul recalls what lies beyond the end,
And bears the hush of ages in its heart.

These hours are not lost—they are the deep,
The ocean floor where buried visions gleam.
From them we rise, like wanderers from sleep,
Still marked by fire, still echoing the dream.

So stands the soul, on thresholds vast and wide,
Between and betwixt the turning of the spheres—
What seemed a life, a dream walks at its side,
Measured not in hours, but in wonder—and in tears.