Proof of gelid gust dusts all we see— the fence-lines, the avenue, the cars half-buried, the scatter of November’s leaves now sealed beneath a stilling plea. What survives survives by yielding: branches bow, the eaves let fall their weighted load in muffled thuds along the yard and walk— an elemental treaty now.
The world composes its reply to summer’s claim and autumn’s boast. No cardinal law, no thunder-host proclaims what drifts down from the lead-grey sky, yet everything it touches seeks to answer why it must comply— the wild rose hips, the window frames, the question lingering in its wake.
By morning all dispute is moot. The snow has made its argument without a word, without assent, soft-covering the curb and root, the path we thought was permanent, the streets where we were confident we’d marked our necessary route.
When the noise comes … it arrives as promise, As liberation, as the four-day week or some such rot— Tools to free us from the tyranny of distance, From the friction of flesh, of paper, of time.
When the noise comes … we open our doors, Thinking the chains have been struck from our wrists, Not seeing how they lengthen, how they follow, How they slip beneath the blankets, coil around our sleep.
When the noise comes … the waves are ceaseless, Each notification a crest that will not break, And we are flotsam, buoyant but not swimming, Tossed up, pulled under, in the very same motion.
When the noise comes … there is no shore, Only the turbulence of feeds and the whirlpools of threads, The shoals of outrage hidden just beneath the scroll, And our eyes blur from the salt and the light.
When the noise comes … we gasp between the swells, Thinking: surely the next breath will be deeper, Surely the merry-go-round’s music will stop, Surely there will be a weekend at the end of this week.
But the calliope plays on, and the carousel never ceases turning, The painted horses rise and fall, rise and fall, And we cannot tell if we are moving forward Or if we have been circling the same worn orbit since morning.
When the noise comes … we look down at our feet, And see that we have not moved, That the frantic pace was only the illusion of motion, The exhaustion mistaken for progress toward something.
When the noise comes … we pause for a moment— The WiFi fails, the battery dies, the server times out— And in that accidental silence the low places remember: The weight of time, the gift of an empty hour, The deep stillness from which we were torn when we said yes To this round-the-clock tether, this chain we call connection.
When the noise comes … we have already forgotten What we meant to think, to say, to comprehend; The forgetting sea is not ahead but around us, We are already drowning in its medium, Already borne away from ourselves While thinking ourselves urgent, essential, awake.
When the noise comes … no one comes to save us, For we have built the flood with our own hands, Subscribed to the deluge, optimized the overwhelm, And called it opportunity, flexibility, freedom— The chains that followed us home, That slipped into our beds, That wind around us even now as we try to sleep, As we remember sleep, As we forget what sleep was.
The Angel of Death Victorious is a bronze funerary sculpture with a marble base, created in 1923 by Herman Matzen. It was commissioned by Francis Henry Haserot after his wife’s passing and is located in Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio. The photograph was taken by Rosette Doyle.
Yet we keep calling them down, hoping for comfort, dreaming of radiance.
They arrive without warning, bearing weight, not mercy: the silence that collapses sound, the gaze that unravels marrow.
We tremble, for their wings are woven of light we cannot bear to see, of shadow we cannot learn to name.
What they touch is never the same. A tree becomes flame. A breath becomes prayer. A man becomes dust.
But is this terror for one heart alone? No—their shadow falls on cities and nations, their silence unsettles centuries.
They do not stoop to whisper comfort. They stride through millennia, their wings stirring wars and kingdoms, their silence heavier than empires.
Temples tremble, mountains bow down, a bell falls silent in the square, the proud are unmade by a glance that knows no compromise.
Still, we call them down, for without their terror we would never glimpse the depth of beauty, nor know that awe and fear are one.
Awe belongs not to possession, nor fear to a single soul, but to the common lot of mortals who stand together before the unendurable.
These ten poetic reflections revisit the protest anthems, lullabies, and cultural hymns that shaped a generation—songs we once sang in innocence, defiance, or hope. But time has sharpened their meanings, revealed their silences, and unsettled their assurances.
Songs I Thought I Understood is not a repudiation of the music, but a reckoning with what we missed—or could not yet see—in the melodies we inherited. Each piece responds to a specific song, not by rewriting it, but by listening anew with older ears and quieter questions.
Songs I Thought I Understood
A Requiem and Reflection in Ten Refrains
by Donald S. Yarab
“For the ones who heard the songs and still ask the questions.”
The Ten Refrains:
Puff Remembers (after “Puff the Magic Dragon”)
The Valley Below (after “One Tin Soldier”)
The Flowers Still Bloom (after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”)
The Needle Lifts (after “This Land Is Your Land”)
The Submarine Below (after “Yellow Submarine”)
No One Was Saved (after “Eleanor Rigby”)
The Wind Still Blows (after “Blowin’ in the Wind”)
Can It Be (after “Let It Be”)
Neon Psalm (after “The Sound of Silence”)
We Have Not (after “We Shall Overcome”)
Puff Remembers
(after “Puff the Magic Dragon”)
Somewhere over the rainbow, Once upon a time, In a land not so far away— Yes, with dragons.
Puff—I remember him well. He sailed without maps, Carried no sword, Only stories.
But Little Jackie Paper— No, I never knew him. He came, they say, with sealing wax, With strings, with child-sized laughter.
And then he left. As children do. As they must.
Puff stayed behind, Watching the tide pull dreams from the sand, Waiting longer than most would, Believing perhaps too much.
Now I am older than Puff was then. The toys are gone. The books are shut. Even memory, sometimes, forgets its lines.
Still— Sometimes I think I hear the flap of canvas, The creak of rope, The rhythm of a boat That knows its way through time.
He may be out there yet— Not waiting, exactly, But still sailing, With room for one more story.
The Valley Below
(after “One Tin Soldier”)
I remember One Tin Soldier, The mountain people, the treasure buried deep, The message of peace— Unspoken, unread, Trampled by riders from the valley below.
As a child, I did not understand Why they came with swords To claim what was freely offered. I did not understand Why they could not wait, Why they did not read.
They were simply the People in the Valley Below.
But now—I know them. They live not far from here. They speak in votes and verdicts, In profits and justifications, In silence, and in slogans Worn smooth with use.
Some are kind, some mean well. Most are afraid. Many never climb.
And though the treasure still lies buried— That old dream of peace, The circle unbroken, The better world whispered in songs— I see fewer walking toward the mountain. Fewer still willing to wait.
The child I was weeps, Not for the dead soldier, But for the living who will never read The words beneath the stone.
The Flowers Still Bloom
(after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”)
The flowers—I see them. They bloom each spring, In roadside ditches, In tended gardens, In places untouched by war Only by accident.
But where are they, Even now? Where are the promises they once held— The wreaths we laid, The songs we sang, The lessons we said we had learned?
Where are the girls who picked them, And the boys they gave them to, Before uniforms, Before funerals, Before forgetting?
They bloom still, Unconcerned. Nature does not mourn the fallen. It only covers them.
We placed our hope in petals And let them drift into the graves— Answers too proud Or too ashamed To be spoken.
Yes, I see the flowers. But I see them differently now. They are not peace. They are not memory. They are what grows when nothing else is left.
The Needle Lifts
(after “This Land Is Your Land”)
This land is your land, This land is mine— That is what the song said. And we sang it, Hand in hand, Before we knew Who drew the lines.
From California to the New York island— Yes, the rivers still run, The redwoods still rise, But whose boots Are turned away At the fence? Whose tent Stands just outside The melody?
I walked that ribbon of highway once. I saw the “No Trespassing” sign, Half-buried in dust. And behind it— Nothing but wind, And memory.
This land was made for you and me. But the deed was never signed. Or if it was, It has been lost Beneath centuries of ash and ink.
The voices fall quiet. The turntable slows. The needle lifts.
And still the land stretches, Unresolved. The chorus unreturned. The question unsung.
The Submarine Below
(after “Yellow Submarine”)
We all lived there, once— In the Yellow Submarine. Or so we sang.
A vessel of laughter, Of porthole dreams And choruses in perfect time.
We believed in it, In its bright hull, Its cartoon courage, Its watertight world Where everyone belonged And nothing intruded.
Unity, We thought, Could be painted in primary colors. Could float beneath the noise, And keep us safe.
But the world knocked. And the hull bent. And the sea Was not always blue.
Some never boarded. Some were told There was no room. Some were thrown overboard Before the song began.
Now I wonder— Was the submarine ever real? Or just a dream we made To keep the waters from us?
If it sails still, It does so With ghosts at the helm, And a quiet We mistook for peace.
No One Was Saved
(after “Eleanor Rigby”)
Eleanor gathered the rice like a rite— Not a wedding, But a funeral in disguise. No one noticed. No one asked Why she did it alone.
She lived in a world of quiet corners, Of teacups with dust, Of pews that creaked For no one in particular.
I did not see her then. Not really. She was background— A figure in a verse I sang without knowing.
And Father McKenzie— He wrote his sermons by candlelight, Even when no one came. He believed in the act, In the speaking itself, As if God were listening Even if the people were not.
I used to think They were odd. Sad, yes— But distant, Part of another time.
Now I see them in doorways, At bus stops, Scrolling through silence On glowing screens. I see them in myself, In the way I answer fewer calls, In the prayers I no longer finish.
All the lonely people— They are not elsewhere. They are not lost in some old song. They are here. And no one was saved.
The Wind Still Blows
(after “Blowin’ in the Wind”)
I remember when the answer Was blowing in the wind. We sang it as if that meant It was near, As if the breeze would carry it to us If we just opened our hands Or listened hard enough.
But I have stood in that wind now. Not once. Not in youthful chorus, But in silence.
And the answers do not ride so lightly.
How many roads? Too many to count. Too many lined with names Etched in metal, Or cardboard signs that ask Not for peace, But for spare change.
How many ears must one man have Before he hears the cry? Enough to wear out the listening. Enough to forget which voice was his.
The cannonballs still fly, Though we call them by different names now— Policy. Preemption. Profit. “Necessary force.”
Yes, the wind still blows. But the answers, If they are there, Have long since been scattered Across deserts, Across oceans, Across generations too tired To ask the questions anymore.
Can It Be
(after “Let It Be”)
When I find myself in times of silence, I do not hear The words of wisdom. I hear the ache of asking Whether silence is answer, Or simply absence.
Let it be, they said. And I tried. I tried to let the world Unfold as it would, To trust in the slow work of time.
But still the wars came. Still the towers fell. Still the hands reached out And found nothing waiting.
Mother Mary— She comes to some. But others Find no visitor In the night.
Let it be? Can it be? Is there something We have not yet asked, Some word not spoken Because we were told Not to speak at all?
There will be an answer— So the song promised. But I have learned That sometimes The answer is another question.
Neon Psalm
(after “The Sound of Silence”)
Hello darkness— It does not answer. It scrolls. It flashes.
We used to whisper to the void And hope it heard. Now we shout And hope it trends.
The prophets write in hashtags, Their sermons flickering Across shattered glass, Their congregations swiping And moving on.
No one walks the quiet streets, No one weeps in the back pew. The cathedral is a comment thread Lit by the glow Of the god we built To hear ourselves.
No one dared disturb The sound of silence— That was the line. But now it is all disturbance. The silence Is what we fear.
I remember when words Had gravity, When they settled in the chest And waited To be spoken with care.
Now even grief Is curated.
Still— Somewhere beneath the algorithms, Beneath the noise mistaken for voice, Beneath the sponsored silence, I believe the old language Waits.
Not to go viral. But to be heard.
We Have Not
(after “We Shall Overcome”)
We shall overcome— That is what we sang. We locked arms, Lit candles, Marched softly into nights Thick with dogs and doubt.
And some did overcome. Some bridges held. Some laws changed. Some doors opened.
But not all.
Not for everyone. Not everywhere. And not for long.
Some came after And tore down the signs, Or rewrote them in finer script. Some left the door ajar Just wide enough To say it had been opened.
I do not mock the song. I remember it. In the bones. In the breath held Before a verdict. In the quiet After a child is buried.
We shall overcome— We whispered it When shouting would not do.
But the road is longer Than the hymnbook said. And the hill steeper Than memory allows.
We have not. Not yet.
Still— There is something in the singing, Even now. Even if the words tremble. Even if the chorus Grows thin.
The Counterpoint of Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky
Caspar David Friedrich, The Sea of Ice, also called The Wreck of Hope Oil on canvas, 96.7 cm × 126.9 cm (1823–1824).
On the Unmaking of Benediction
This cycle of verses—The Inversion Cycle—emerged not as a contradiction, but as a counterweight to The Blessing of Morpheus: The Sending Forth, a series of benedictions articulated in reverent tones and metaphysical gestures within the poem Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky. That earlier work was rooted in the soul’s deep yearning toward the ineffable, culminating in luminous affirmations bestowed by the dream-god Morpheus upon the seeker. In time, those benedictions came to feel too complete, too resolved. I began to wonder: what if they failed?
TheInversion Cycle is not blasphemy, but a form of apophatic honesty. It does not seek to erase Ponder, but to stand beside it—its negative counterpoint. Each scroll of the cycle corresponds to a specific line or blessing from Ponder and performs an act of unmaking: where Morpheus blesses, these verses refrain; where he sends the seeker into mystery, these verses stall at the threshold; where he assures, they withhold.
To honor that reversal, a further restraint was imposed: the exclusion of the very vocabulary upon which the original work (and many of my other recent works) so often relied. Words such as breath, dust, light, shadow, silence, and memory—among others—have been set aside. Their absence is not a loss but a signal. These are not the tools we are permitted to carry here.
The scrolls appear here in the same order as the benedictions from Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky. This reversal respects the original arc—from the loosening of dreams to the transformation of the soul—and follows its negative path with precision.
What remains is austerity, not despair. These unsacraments do not offer consolation, but they do speak. If Ponder was a song of ascent, then this is the long exhale after the music ends—a psalter of withheld grace, composed in the space where blessing does not descend.
Let this work be read not in defiance of belief, but in the trembling of its undoing. For if it is brave to bless, it is perhaps braver still to stand in the space where blessing will not come—and write there, in the dust, what remains.
Scroll I: Of the Clinging Husk
Let not your dreams fall— for they will not fall. They remain, clinging like husks unpicked, blackened not by season, but by refusal.
You will try to cast them down, but they are fastened, not to limb, but to marrow.
They do not curl like leaves. They do not return to soil. They sour upon you, a bitterness in the sinew, a ferment in the thought.
And if you turn to shake them loose, they will tighten. Their threads are not of sleep, but of habit, knotted in long forgetting.
There is no wind to lift them. No frost to loosen them. No gardener comes.
Remain, then, beneath their burden— bent, unshed, unchanged.
Scroll II: Of the Inscribed Weight
Take them. You will take them. You cannot help it.
The names carved into stone, the words burned into walls, the cries etched into earth— they cling not to your pack, but to your ribs.
You bear them not as titles, but as scars.
They whisper through your marrow, resisting every act of unmaking. You try to enter the place without form, but they speak before you. They call the ground by its old name, and the gate does not open.
Even the sky does not answer when it hears them rising again.
These names were not carved to remember. They were carved to bind.
And now, as you stand at the edge of the place where all naming ends, they press their syllables against your tongue, and you speak them, not in defiance, but because you cannot forget.
Scroll III: Of Implements Abandoned
Bring not the weighted balances, nor the woven snares of longing. They do not hold, not here.
Their handles crack in the frost where no stars rise to bless the hour. Their mesh is brittle—threaded not of wool, but of claims left too long in the mouth.
The mind, honed to edge, cuts only fog in this place. The heart, cupped too gently, spills what it never held.
There are no laurels in this soil, only reeds that do not bend and brambles that do not bleed.
And should you cast such tools before you, expecting fruit, or fire, or favor— they will return to you as ash, unsought, unshaped, the chaff of means mistaken for ends.
Scroll IV: Of the Withheld Offering
Bring not your hollowed chest, stripped clean of ornaments and plea. It will not be filled.
Wonder has no purchase here. Its gaze returns unreflected from stone too smooth to be shaped.
Let the mind remain loud and unyielding, for awe would shatter in this poise like frost-cracked bronze.
As for your feet— do not lift them. There is no basin here, only ground dry from the beginning, lined with rings that do not ripple.
The wind does not attend. It does not lift. It does not listen.
There is no path across this floor, only grit, and the marks of those who came thinking they would walk upon revelation.
Scroll V: Of the False Horizon
Do not seek. There is no one to be found.
The sea does not receive you. It is not fluid, but glare stretched to the edge of motion— shimmering not with promise, but with mirage.
You did not launch. You drifted. And your craft was not chosen, but assigned, drawn from timbers meant for no voyage.
The sky above you swells with stars, but none are true. Each one marks a path that bends inward, circling you back to your forgetting.
You will think you move. You will call it seeking. You will call it bold. But you are already known by the thing that does not answer. And it has left no threshold, only wind that cannot be charted and depth that does not hold.
Scroll VI: Of the Barren Threshold
There is no beyond. Only the gray field where sleep forgets its end and waking does not begin.
Here, nothing waits. Not voice, not veil, not even the last gasp of wonder.
What lies past dream is not fullness, but poise robbed of sanctity— the deafness of stones before their naming.
No stars ever hung above this place. No fire traced its vault. Only pallor, dull as bone in a dry shrine, untouched by flame or veil.
And death, so often imagined a gate, has no depth here. It is shallow, crusted, and holds nothing but its own refusal.
Let no one say this place is holy. It is not what remains made full— but vacancy made permanent.
A place unmourned. Uncalled. Unmade.
Scroll VII: Of the Unbecome
Go not. There is nowhere that calls. No road unfurls before you, no veil parts, no watchful eye lingers on your vanishing.
The question you bore was not accepted. It curled back into you, like a tongue that feared its own utterance.
You will not be shaped by asking, nor known by your seeking. You will remain as you were before the yearning— a vessel without fracture, never poured, never filled.
No sound will rise behind you. No trace will stir where your feet passed. Even the soil will forget your weight.
Be still, not in peace, but in the form that does not unfold. Remain—not as the question— but as that which never found its shape.
Scroll VIII: The Soul Beneath the Blanched Sky
The soul, girded and unmoved, stood beneath a sky without veil— a dome blanched of fire, where nothing had ever gleamed, only ash adrift from unremembered pyres.
It bore no garment. No mark of calling or descent. It was as parchment without script, unhandled, unblemished, unread.
No winds stirred the plain. Only cairns rose in rows, not raised in reverence, but born of the land’s refusal to yield.
The trees there had no buds. Their limbs were stiff, as if carved for stillness— a forest of halted prayers. And beneath them, the roots did not seek nourishment, but curled inward, content in their forgetting.
There was no calm, no sacred pause. Instead, a muttering of syllables rose from the dry hollows— sounds without grammar, without bond, giving rise to no names, no intelligible form.
And when the soul pressed its palm to the ground, there was no spring, no pulse, only crusted clay— neither moist nor cracked, a firmness that would not give.
It asked nothing. Not from pride, but from knowing that some places are beyond summons— places where even longing has been turned to stone.
Northcoast Antiquarian 