Photograph from Cleveland Public Power, demonstrating the illuminating power of its new LED technology streetlights. Over 61,000 streetlights will soon have the energy saving bulbs in Cleveland, Ohio.
Contemplate the glow of the streetlight, artificially illuminating the shadows.
The glow of the streetlight, casting its harsh, artificial light against the natural darkness, creates a curious interplay between illumination and shadow. It’s a modern torch, piercing through the obscurity with a steady, almost indifferent beam, not a light of the sun or stars but a product of human hands. Its glow is sterile, pale compared to the warm light of day, yet it transforms the night in ways that natural light cannot.
The streetlight becomes a kind of overseer, dictating where shadows may fall, altering the natural order of things. Instead of the fluid, ever-changing dance of sunlight, this light is fixed, harshly delineating the boundaries between what is seen and what is hidden. The shadows it creates are sharper, more angular, as though the streetlight has imposed a new geometry upon the world.
Beneath this glow, the familiar takes on a different character—edges that fade into indistinct darkness during the day now stand out in sharp relief. The street, the buildings, the trees, all are transformed into figures on a stage, the artificial light giving them a sense of isolation, as if they exist alone in a frozen moment. Yet, despite its clarity, the light itself is never quite enough to banish the shadows. It merely pushes them into different corners, leaving a quiet, lurking presence at the edge of perception.
In this artificial illumination, there is a tension: the light reveals, but incompletely, allowing shadow and light to entwine in an unresolved embrace. The streetlight does not offer the warmth or guidance of natural light, but rather a cold certainty, making the shadows seem more distant, more impenetrable, perhaps even more alive. It’s a glow that brings clarity to what is immediate but deepens the mystery of what lies beyond.
The music in the YouTube video below, Forgotten Memory of a Dying Dream, has utterly captivated me. Its delicate piano notes, scattered like raindrops, lull me into a trance, much like the gentle patter of autumn rain. I find myself playing it on repeat, mesmerized by its melancholic beauty. The music is both soothing and evocative, drawing me into a realm of reflection and relaxation. Inspired by this, I felt compelled to offer a poetic response—an embrace, of sorts, to the mood it evokes. But please, I encourage you to listen to the music to fully appreciate the inspiration behind the poem—I have had it on repeat for days.
Autumn’s Forgotten Dream
The keys fall soft, like autumn rain, A whispered sigh in quiet refrain. Each note, a droplet, cool and clear, Tells of dreams that disappear.
The melody drifts, a mournful breeze, Through branches bare of summer’s leaves. It echoes long, then fades away, Like shadows at the edge of day.
In every pause, the silence hums, A memory of what never comes. The piano weeps in gentle streams, For forgotten hopes and dying dreams.
The Sower (oil on canvas, 1888) by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Note on the Origin of This Poem
This poem was inspired by a recent reflection on T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets (with a nod to Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, which I have also recently revisited). Eliot’s meditation on time has long intrigued me, particularly his exploration of the eternal present where past, present, and future are interwoven. His lines, “What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present,” reflect an awareness of unrealized possibilities lingering in memory, resonating with the tension between choice and fate.
While Eliot does not dwell entirely on regret, his imagery—such as “the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened”—evokes a sense of paths unchosen and moments lost, suggesting an undercurrent of melancholy and reflection on missed opportunities.
This contrasts with my own perspective, which views the past not as a source of sorrow or lamentation but as a guide—a map to navigate the future. For me, the past should instruct us, not torment us. I focus not on what might have been but on the lessons that can inform where we must go next. As I recently discussed with one of my sisters, I learned more from my past failures, whether on school exams, work situations, or personal circumstances, than I did from my successes.
In short, regret is the most useless emotion.
Inspired by this distinction, I sought to explore these ideas poetically, offering a reflection on time that emphasizes the instructive value of the past rather than its potential to weigh us down with regret.
The Past Is but a Map
The past is not a chain of sorrow, Not the dust of what we might have been— But a map unfolding, Marked by lines of roads untaken. The tests we failed are etched more deeply Than triumphs where we passed unscarred. The echo of footfalls is not regret’s whisper But instruction pointing forward. The door unopened is not lamented But a path unseen, Waiting to instruct. Hard lessons carve deeper than easy ones; Each misstep, a mark of progress. The teacher we resisted Becomes the guide we heed. There is no torment in yesterday’s shadow, Only the light of what we must now become. Ever forward, we glance back— Not for grief, But for direction, For the past keeps its own counsel As we shape the days to come.
The Epic of Gilgamesh and its related ancient tales have long been a source of inspiration for me, often woven into my prose. Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of reading an essay by Andrew George, written in 2012, which I highly recommend to your attention: The Mayfly on the River: Individual and Collective Destiny in the Epic of Gilgamesh. As with all of George’s works, this essay is masterful, and it resonated with much of my recent work. By coincidence, his reference to the mayfly aligned perfectly with a sub-theme of a monograph I have been developing over the past several weeks.
Inspired by these reflections and my own experience with the loss of close friends, I chose to explore The Epic of Gilgamesh through poetry, marking a departure from my usual prose. Below, I offer a poem that captures a dream in which Gilgamesh contemplates the profound absence of Enkidu, his friend and companion, who met death as punishment for the transgressions he and Gilgamesh committed against the gods. The timeless relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu seemed to me a fitting metaphor for the sorrow that accompanies the loss of friends and the enduring nature of their memory.
An Audio Recitation of Donald S. Yarab’s The Dream of Gilgamesh
The Dream of Gilgamesh
In the shadows of my sleep, you came, Enkidu, my brother, carved from the heavens, The rock that fell to earth and struck me whole. But now the earth has claimed you, Silent is the storm of your breath, Felled like the great cedar, your might is no more. I reach for you, yet grasp but dust.
The gods whisper through the winds, Enkidu, you are beyond my reach, Though I call, your name echoes Through the empty halls of Uruk, A soundless shadow, a memory unmade.
In the dream, I see you on the plain, Your laughter rolls like thunder once more, Yet it is distant, swallowed by the sky. I run to you, but the earth swallows my feet, The horizon stretches and bends, And you fade, a shadow of stars, Leaving me to wrestle with the night.
Oh, Enkidu, my companion, my rock from the heavens, In life, you steadied me, made my heart whole. Now the world is too wide, The journey too long. What joy can be found in Uruk’s walls, Without your hand upon my shoulder? You lie beneath the river stones, And I am left to wander the desolate road alone.
When I was but twelve years old and in the sixth grade, I was already a peculiar lad—of that, there can be no dispute. One of my distinct memories from that time is sharing with Miss Davis, my teacher, that I had purchased a dictionary, which I studied ardently each night to enrich my vocabulary. Even then, I was enamored with words and punctuation—the brick and mortar of literature and poetry—and I was learning as much about them as I could. A few years later, in high school, as I have noted elsewhere, a very dear educator, my sophomore English teacher Mrs. Calpin, honored me with a graduation gift: a thesaurus, in recognition of my love of words.
At college, I developed another peculiar habit, alongside acquiring yet another new dictionary. Whenever I coined a neologism (which I believed perfectly appropriate to do), I would record it on a sheet that I had inserted into the dictionary for future reference. That dictionary remains in my possession, though not readily at hand or in regular use, as will soon be explained. Otherwise, I would gladly provide an example of one of those neologisms.
After I finished college and law school, and was sufficiently recompensed as an attorney for the federal government, I indulged myself with the purchase of the complete hardbound set of The Oxford English Dictionary: Second Edition as well as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is a safe assumption that few homes, indeed, few offices, possess either of these gems for consultation, let alone for regular use. But the wealth of words contained in these volumes—the backbone of a rich and wondrous language—is awe-inspiring. Not once have I regretted the sum spent on their purchase, nor the richness they have added to both my writing and knowledge.
This lifelong fascination with language, along with those dictionaries and thesauruses, naturally informs my choice of words in my prose writing and poetry, where every term is carefully considered. This serves as a preface and background to a brief note I would like to append to my poem Where is Am I?
Some who have read the poem may be struck by the verse:
The shadow of a shadow, a footfall lost to time’s soft track?
In particular, they may find footfall to be wholly unfamiliar. Of course, the vocabulary in the poem was not selected by happenstance; every word was chosen with deliberate care, and footfall was no exception. I hesitated only momentarily before selecting this word, but ultimately decided that context should guide the reader (or listener, as poems should always be recited after being read).
To clarify, I did consider alternatives such as step, trace, footprint, and mark, but I ultimately returned to footfall during the poem’s construction. Footfall is not a neologism; it appears in the Oxford English Dictionary (see accompanying image of the Oxford English Dictionary entry for footfall). Footfall refers to the act of stepping—the motion and sound of a foot hitting the ground—rather than the trace or mark left behind, such as a footprint. As such, footfall captures the fleeting nature of action itself, emphasizing the transitory motion rather than the lasting trace of a footprint.
Oxford English Dictionary: Second Edition – entry for footfall
To add another layer to my choice of footfall, it was not just the meaning but the sound of the word itself that carried significance. Again, poetry is to be recited, not just read. The soft, muted quality of the word, when spoken aloud, mirrors the quiet, almost imperceptible nature of the action it describes. The word begins with a gentle f sound, followed by a soft, cushioned ending—a fall that lands lightly, much like the act of stepping itself. It has an almost whispered quality, evoking the idea of a footstep that passes quietly through time, barely noticed before it fades entirely.
This auditory element of the word footfall reinforces the theme of impermanence in the poem. The word itself, in both sound and evanescence, fades even as it is spoken, much like the action it represents disappears into time’s soft track. The fleeting nature of footfall contrasts with the more solid, lasting impression suggested by alternatives like footprint or mark. Where those words imply something left behind, footfall emphasizes the moment of movement itself—the instant when the foot touches the ground, just before it lifts again, leaving no lasting trace.
It is this auditory resonance that made footfall the right choice for the verse, as it complements the poem’s exploration of the transient and fragile nature of human conscious presence and action in the universe. In pairing this word with time’s soft track, the verse captures the tension between motion and stillness, existence and disappearance, echoing the poem’s larger themes of impermanence and the passing of time.
This interpretation also explains my selection of the image of an eroding footprint, a fossilized mark in sand, as a visual metaphor for time’s imperceptible erasure of human presence, chosen to illustrate the poem. The image embodies the idea of humanity, an individual, attempting to leave a lasting mark, while acknowledging that even fossils, over time, are subject to the elements—in time’s soft track.
The word footfall also appears in T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets. Eliot has been a favorite of mine since I first read Murder in the Cathedral at the age of twelve or thirteen. The specific lines containing footfall open Burnt Norton:
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know.
Northcoast Antiquarian 