He formed him
from the ground—
clay still wet,
clinging.
He bent close.
spent breath passed—
spittle,
the damp of earth
at the mouth.
And the man lived:
warm,
hungry,
leaking already
what he would lose.
This was not corruption.
This was the gift.
Tag: metaphysical poetry
Psalm at the Glass
Sand—
before sight,
before consent,
light broken among grains,
each scattering its claim.
Heat intervenes:
lightning’s instant law,
the long travail of fire,
a stone descending
without regard.
What shatters
learns another order.
Glass remembers
its former dust.
In the mirror
a tower stands—
not stone,
but color
held by lead,
raised through fracture.
Harps flank it,
strings held still,
as if sound itself
were waiting
to be spared.
Notes lie as sand lies,
each apart,
each complete,
owing nothing
to the whole.
Or else the chord
was always present,
and hearing is the art
of consent.
Reflection is not the self,
but the hour
when the many
are allowed
to hold together.
Icy Stars
Icy stars—
points of ancient fire made brittle by distance,
as though the heavens themselves had entered winter.
They do not blaze; they prick.
They hang, hard and lucid, in a silence sharpened by cold.
Such stars feel less like promises than reckonings.
Their light arrives stripped of warmth,
having crossed immensities where heat was spent long ago.
What reaches the eye is endurance, not comfort—
illumination without mercy.
In winter they seem closer,
because the air has been scoured clean of softness.
Each star stands alone, exact, unblurred,
the sky insisting on precision,
on the refusal of haze, metaphor, or excuse.
Indeed—stars resemble snowflakes.
Each one discrete,
each one sharp with its own geometry,
no two quite alike,
yet all governed by the same severe order.
They fall not downward but inward,
settling upon the mind rather than the ground.
They do not melt; they persist.
What snow does to the earth—
muting, clarifying, equalizing—
stars do to thought.
Yet they are dissimilar in temperament—decisively so.
The star, for all its pinprick stillness to the eye,
is violence without pause:
fusion, a steady hammer at its core,
plasma boiling and convecting within its bounds,
only to be held together by gravity’s unrelenting fist.
Its light is not calm but coerced—
order wrested from perpetual revolt.
The snowflake, by contrast, is obedience incarnate.
It forms in surrender to temperature, pressure, and time,
each facet answering silently to law.
Nothing churns; nothing rebels.
Structure blooms where energy dissipates,
an architecture born not of struggle but of yielding.
And yet—what appears as opposition resolves into fidelity:
both answering to temperature, to nature, to law.
Not submission,
but staying true
to what is given,
to what may not be otherwise.
The star obeys by burning.
Given mass and pressure, it cannot do otherwise.
Fusion is not choice but consequence,
law pressed hard upon matter
until light is forced into being.
Its turbulence is not rebellion
but endurance under extremes.
The snowflake obeys by forming.
Lowered heat, suspended vapor,
the slightest allowance of stillness—
and geometry appears.
No facet decides;
each angle arrives as it must.
Thus neither star nor snowflake is free,
and yet both are exact.
They do not err,
because they do not aspire.
They enact what must be—
and leave us to consider
what it means to call that perfection.
A Skipping Stone
A skipping stone, chosen with care by human hand,
breaks the still glass of lake serene;
for stones remember what time forgets,
and in their flight, recall all the more.
What does it remember?
The molten cradle of its birth beneath the sea,
the mountain’s shattering rise from the deep,
the patient sleep in riverbed and shore.
The warmth of the palm that cast it forth,
the whisper of air between each skip—
and how, in falling, it becomes again
what it has always been:
stillness beneath all motion.
Temple Ruins
By Donald S. Yarab
When the Rains Come
When the rains come … the dust shall become mud,
When the rains come … the mud shall become mire,
And the feet of the proud shall sink to the ankle,
And their words shall cling like clay to their tongues.
When the rains come … the roofs shall tremble,
The cisterns shall overflow their stone mouths,
And the low places shall remember the sea,
Calling out to the deep from which they were torn.
When the rains come … the idols shall dim,
Their painted eyes veiled in silt and silence,
And the temples shall weep through broken eaves,
For their gods shall not answer from the thunder.
When the rains come … the earth shall be heavy,
And the hearts of men heavier still;
The widow shall draw her shawl to her face,
And the child shall forget the taste of dry bread.
When the rains come … we shall huddle together,
Beholding the waters erase our names from the doorposts,
And none shall boast of his harvest,
For the river shall take what it wills,
Bearing all things toward the forgetting sea.
When the Sun Is Restored
When the sun is restored … the waters shall fade,
When the sun is restored … the mire shall break and sigh,
And the earth shall stir beneath the plough,
Breathing again as if reborn.
When the sun is restored … warmth shall come first,
A balm to the chilled and the shivering earth;
Green shall rise from the broken furrows,
And the people shall bless the light.
When the sun is restored … the fields shall swell,
The ears grow heavy, the vines bend low;
And laughter shall echo in the threshing floor,
Till the grain lies fuller than the granaries can hold.
And in the noonday brightness the sparrows fell silent,
For they knew the hour would not endure.
When the sun is restored … the rivers shall dwindle,
The soil yawn open like a parched mouth,
And famine shall creep from the roots of plenty,
Taking the firstborn of abundance.
When the sun is restored … the hearts of men shall fail,
Their tongues cleaving to the roofs of their mouths;
And the widow shall weep no longer,
For her tears have been taken by the wind.
When the sun is restored … we shall gather at the well,
Staring into its empty throat,
And all shall return to dust,
For from dust were we raised, and to dust we descend;
And we lift parched hands, as if exalting to heaven for rain,
That the circle may begin again.
When the Silence Falls
When the silence falls … the people shall gather,
Not in joy nor mourning, but in stillness;
And the priests shall stand before the altar,
Their hands empty of offerings.
When the silence falls … the incense shall not rise,
For no prayer shall remain upon our lips;
We have cried out in the rains and cursed in the drought,
And now we have no words to give.
When the silence falls … the children shall ask,
“Why do we come to this place?”
And the elders shall have no answer,
For the stones themselves have forgotten their purpose.
When the silence falls … the priests shall look upon each other,
And see their own faces as through water;
They shall remember the prayers they learned as boys,
And wonder if the words were ever heard.
When the silence falls … we shall see what we have built—
Altars worn smooth by our hands,
Bowls that held grain and oil and blood,
All the bargaining of our fathers with the sky.
When the silence falls … no voice shall descend,
Neither blessing nor judgment from above;
And we shall know that we stand alone,
Between the rain we fear and the sun we cannot bear,
Waiting in the house we made for a goddess
Who has not spoken in living memory.
Northcoast Antiquarian 