Gold ground. White horse.
The lance always descending,
the dragon always caught —
not slain, not winning,
that suspension my daily bread,
the point perpetually
at the point of.
I returned to it as to a chapel,
the dragons within
held by that stasis,
by what the icon
promised and kept.
Then —
the gold ground shifting,
the lance no longer
quite descending,
the dragon lifting —
St. George,
for the first time,
imperiled.
The always
became
was.
I am undone.
Discombobulated am I,
but matters it not.
The wind knows no grammar;
the rain has forgot.
Unraveled the morning,
unmapped, the way—
yet onward the light moves,
indifferent, the day.
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.
“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.
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.
Northcoast Antiquarian 