May 2025 – Page 5 – Northcoast Antiquarian

Not of Myth, Yet Hero Born

He lifts himself from bed without remark
to meet the worn, repeated tasks at hand.
No record marks the ground on which he strains—
no witness, no laurel, no acclaim.
His strength lies not in storied deed but labor plain:
a hearth kept warm, a family fed, life sustained.
No tale is told, no stone inscribed or raised—
the ordinary man, in toil, is born.

The meaning lies in being, not in praise;
in beauty glimpsed, not possessed though understood.
No crowns he needs nor feast days held for him;
his worth is in the craft, the nail, the wood.
He does not seek to master, nor to flee,
but walks the field, or mends a gate, or tends a tree.
In passing light, in gesture undesigned,
a truth is touched, not grasped, yet binds.

The purpose is in others—in shared bread,
the coat repaired, the cup placed in the hand;
in love soft-spoken, faithful in its giving,
not in the vow proclaimed, but in the deed.
His days are stitched with care that shows no seam,
his name unsung, his work by others’ need.
Though he may pass unnamed when he is gone,
he will have sown the path that others walk upon.

The Weight of Existence: Sisyphus’ New Dawn

**Franz von Stuck, *Sisyphus* (1920)**
Oil on canvas, 103 × 89 cm. Galerie Ritthaler, Munich.
© Collection Galerie Ritthaler.

“Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.”
(“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”)
—Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942)

But perhaps he was mistaken.
Perhaps the truth is simpler:
When the stone is gone, the man remains.

Sisyphus Undone; or, It Was Tuesday

by Donald S. Yarab

He rose, as ever, with the morning’s breath,
the hill still steep, the silence oddly wide.
No stone to greet him with its weight or will—
no groan of earth, no task to be defied.

The gods were gone. Their laughter had grown faint,
or else the air refused to carry sound.
The path he wore through centuries lay bare,
a scar now healing into senseless ground.

He searched for signs: a crack, a trace, a mark,
but found no proof that toil had ever been.
His hands, once strong with strain, now idle hung,
still shaped by burdens long dissolved within.

He sat. The dust rose lightly at his knee.
A lark began to sing, then flew away.
The sky, untroubled, held no word for him.
The world had turned. It was another day.

What is the self when labor fades to wind?
What is the myth once struggle slips its chain?
He breathed. No answer stirred the lucid air.
The hill was whole. The man was left, and plain.

The Sermon on the Stump: Beneath the Rain

The Sermon on the Stump

by Donald S. Yarab

It was raining. The crowd—
too few to be a crowd—perhaps
a gathering, or the assembled,
more ghosts than listeners,
their coats darkened not just by weather
but by the weight of waiting.

He stood on the stump,
not of authority, but of loss—
the remnant of a tree felled long before,
as if the forest had once believed
in clearing room for prophecy.

He spoke not of thunder,
but of hush. Not of redemption,
but of what remained
after the soil forgot its seed.

The gathering, if such it was,
did not cheer, nor weep.
They listened with the rain,
as if the water itself
were translating his broken cadence
into something nearly true.

He spoke not of hope, or loss,
of tomorrow, or yesterday,
or even today.
He named no sins,
offered no absolution,
held no book but the hush
of water sliding down his sleeve.

His voice did not rise.
It pooled.
Like the rain in the hollow of the stump
beneath him.
He said only:
“You have heard the wind.
Now hear the stillness it leaves behind.”

And they did not answer.
Not from doubt,
but because his words were not questions.
They were roots—
groping downward through silence,
seeking something older than belief.

A dog barked in the distance.
A child shifted,
not from boredom,
but from the weight of understanding
too early what it meant to stand still
in a world that keeps spinning.

He stepped down,
the stump left wet,
as if it had wept a little too.

And the assembled, if that is what they were,
dispersed—no closer,
no farther,
but marked.

Some were bewildered.
Others thought they were enlightened,
but knew not how.
Still others could not recall
what he had said,
only that his voice was comforting,
his cadence soothing—
not the lullaby of forgetfulness,
but the murmur of rain on old wood,
reminding them of something
they had never quite known.

No creed was offered.
No call to return.
Yet a few found themselves
walking more slowly afterward,
listening more intently
to trees, to puddles,
to silences that did not demand reply.

And the stump remained—
neither altar nor monument,
but a place where words once settled
like mist
and did not vanish.

I Am Undone

**The vague glimmer of a head suspended in space**
(1891, Lithograph)
Odilon Redon (1840–1916)

I Am Undone

It came not with fury, nor with fire.
Not a blow, but a breath withheld.
A stillness uncoiling in the spine.
I did not cry out. I did not fall.
I said only—I am undone.
And the words were true,
though I did not yet know
how much they would mean.

II.

The star chart curled into ash.
Landmarks dimmed, receded,
folded into fog.
I had names once—
for the road, the self, the longing.
They rusted in my mouth.
I said again, am I—
but the word faltered.
Was I I? Was am still?
Was undone the end, or only
a door swinging inward with no floor?

III.

I wandered, perhaps.
Or stood still and the world wandered past.
The days no longer linked.
Events occurred—but not to me.
Faces mouthed shapes I could not
hear or remember.
I touched a wall that had always been there.
It crumbled under my hand.
I called it home, or meant to.
Or once had.
I think.

Un—done—I am—undone am I—
I am…am I…?

IV.

And the past…
no, the shape before the past—
was it mine?
Or borrowed from the eyes of others?
Their eyes are gone.
The mirror does not
answer.
I meant to say a thing—
some thing—
a small
thing—
but the mouth no longer forms
what the mind no longer sends.

There is no forward.
There is no back.
There is no—

(no is)

V. Dissolution

I think I said—I was—
no. I had said.
Once.

Undone.
It was the word. I said it.
Before.
Or after.
I do not—

No shape to the day.
No frame to the thought.
They come—go—
without edge.

The name of the thing
was… not there.
And the word for that—
what was the word?
The word is gone.
The knowing is
not.

I am
        am I
                un—
        not
     not done—
            not I—
      I—was

(was?)

And now—