Swirling waves, dervish-like in their intent,
divining direction beneath the moon,
the water neither wandering nor sent
but turning, as all turning things must turn
toward some still point the motion can’t explain —
the eye of every gyre a kind of prayer,
where salt forgets itself, freed of its name,
becomes the simple fact of moving: here,
and here, and here. The moon gives no reply.
She keeps her cold and distant office, draws
the deep in rhythms older than the sky
and older still than any naming laws.
So let the dervish and the wave agree:
to spin is not to search — it is to be.
Tag: poetic meditation
Between Astonishment and Silence
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” Psalm 8:3-4
The Psalmist, gazing beneath the vault of stars, marvels aloud:
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
The heavens dwarf him, the dust clings to him,
yet he dares believe the Maker bends low, remembers, and grants worth.
But even in that astonishment, the shadow of doubt stirs.
Another voice—the Philosopher’s—finds in the same expanse not remembrance but silence.
The stars speak only of distance,
the void carries no voice.
Armenia and Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Rwanda, Ukraine and Gaza—
the graves of countless innocents cry out:
how can one still say, Thou art mindful?
Likewise, science has stripped the heavens bare:
no angels in the spheres, only galaxies colliding in indifferent law.
Scripture, once oracle, is now artifact, sifted by history.
Thus the question sharpens: not What is man, that Thou art mindful?
but Is Thou mindful at all?
Between astonishment and silence stands the Poet, unable to forsake either.
He reveres the psalm, yet trembles with the Philosopher’s doubt.
Inheritance falters: the words remain precious,
but their certainty slips from them.
Still, he will not cast them aside.
Instead, he holds the fragments as one might hold a candle in the wind:
not enough to illumine the void,
yet enough to keep the darkness from being complete.
He labors to shape language into vigil,
to bind meaning against the scatter of grief,
to weave remembrance into flame so silence is not the final word.
Perhaps mindfulness is only man’s work—
to remember, to wrest coherence from the scatter of loss.
Or perhaps it is more: a presence that waits rather than speaks,
a silence that shelters rather than denies.
The Poet does not resolve the question;
he learns instead to live within it,
to practice reverence without assurance,
until the asking itself becomes our mindfulness.
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Silence as Falling
By Donald S. Yarab
ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή
“The way up and the way down are one and the same.”
—Heraclitus, Fragment 60 (Diels–Kranz); cf. Fragment 69 (Kirk & Raven)
When the mind enclosed reels, the frame gives way—
No border left to mark the night from day.
No cry, no anchor, only this descent
Where meaning bleeds and thought is all but spent.
It is not drift, but failure to remain—
The loosening of self from shape, from name.
It does not seek, nor struggle, nor insist—
It simply ceases, lost beyond all reach.
No wind attends, no witness marks the trace,
No voice declares the vanishing of place.
The silence is not peace, but what survives
When all the scaffolds break, and none revives.
No hand to hold, no vow left to defend—
One thought still clings—then breaks before the bend.
Just falling, falling, not to sky or land,
But into being none can understand.
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Ode to the Deep
I. Stillness Before the Descent
What stirs in silence but the thought of falling?
The soul leans forward at the edge of time,
Where earth gives way to rhythm without measure—
No firmament beneath, no axis left to climb.
The wind is absent here. The light, unsure.
All motion trembles on the breath of stillness.
We speak of peace, yet dread the calmest shore—
For we have built our gods from fear and witness.
II. The Water Below
Not storm, not wave, nor tempest’s hissing swell,
But quiet depth—the fathomless unknown,
Uncoiling silence from a buried bell
Where light has never touched the sea-worn stone.
Here dwell no monsters, save the mind’s own eye.
The fear is not of drowning, but of seeing—
That which reflects not sky, but self, and why
The soul recoils from naked being.
III. The Humbling
The sea does not instruct with word or wind—
It shapes the soul by salt and slow erosion.
A kneeling cliff, worn smooth where waves have pinned
Each boast to sand, each name to dark devotion.
The deeper still you go, the less you hold—
No torch remains, no doctrine, no command.
The deep forgives, but never does it fold—
It presses wonder into trembling hand.
IV. What Remains
So is the fear a gift, once held aright—
A trembling compass on the soul’s long chart.
For he who feared the deep, yet dared its night,
Returns not wise—but hollowed, whole of heart.
He cannot speak of what he saw below,
Only that silence taught him how to kneel.
And those who know will know. The rest may go
To read their truths upon a turning wheel.
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At the Crossing: On Language, Perception, and the Haunting of Truth
Indian ink brush wash and colored pencil on paper, 64 × 48 cm.
Kunstmuseum aan Zee, Ostend, Belgium.
At the Crossing
by Donald S. Yarab
Words
gather like dew on dawn’s edge,
names unspoken, waiting to be born.
They tremble in the mouth of silence—
a stillness before the world.
But say them, and they splinter—
what was whole becomes approximate.
Each syllable divides the light
and leaves behind shadow.
Color
can have no truth—
for truth demands a stillness
color will not grant.
It shifts with light, with eye,
with sorrow or with song.
If it were true, which hue would reign?
Whose gaze would be the measure?
It is not fact, but feeling—
not essence, but event.
Touch
is first knowing,
before word, before sight.
It does not describe—it confirms.
Yet it deceives:
a surface hides a wound,
a hand may linger, then withdraw.
What truth lies in contact—
in pressure, in pulse?
Or is touch merely the place
where self and other collide
and pretend to know?
Sound
resonates not in air alone,
but in the hollows of the soul.
One hears hymn, another wound.
Its truth lies not in frequency,
but in the body that receives it—
in bones that tremble,
in hearts that flinch.
Which is the true tone—
the one that soothes, or the one that sears?
Time
marches allegedly, metronomic, proud—
but to whom does it keep this beat?
To the grieving, it halts mid-breath;
to the joyful, it slips its leash and runs.
Some say it flows;
others drown without a ripple.
Perhaps it does not move at all—
perhaps we shift,
casting shadows on still walls
and calling them hours.
Truth
cannot be summoned by sense,
nor sealed in proposition.
It glimmers, briefly,
when doubt is honored,
when contradiction is not flaw but form.
Truth is not what endures,
but what survives the testing—
a trembling filament between worlds,
not the anchor,
but the thread.
Intersection
is not a place but a moment—
when word is heard,
when color wounds,
when sound divides the silence,
when time dissolves into breath,
and touch recalls the nearness of all things.
And there—
at that trembling margin—
truth does not appear.
It haunts
the space where meaning almost forms.
Northcoast Antiquarian 