Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this. 

                                                                                                                                 Ecclesiastes* 7:10

 

I went mining for memories in music made old by decades and dust,

Only to find yesterday’s songs stuck in yesterday.

 

There was the ballad that reminded me of her –

The kind of her that can only exist in the past,

In the sort of love can only end in failure,

Like the game of hide-and-seek she lost interest in and walked away

While I was too young to know when to quit looking.

 

Another song reminded me of that old dream

Now collecting dust on a tapestry whose history would never be woven,

Shrouded behind Arachne’s ghostly webs,

Before anyone told me what we all must learn:

The future is a perfect fiction

We write in our minds when we still haven’t learned to be still.

 

I said to my soul, be still –

Leave the charge of inescapable vanity

On Qoheleth’s lips and yesterday in yesterday.

The past is never gilded, it was a gut-punch to be endured,

If you endure, it was not in vain.

I said again to my soul, be still, the music never ends

And the only melodies worth losing yourself in are playing here, now;

The only love immune from failure is what you give here, now

When your happiness ceases to matter.

 

There are only so many notes, do not forget what matters most –

How they are played, and how they are heard.

Every song worth remembering is a variation on a theme

That is playing here, now and will play again.

And, the memories worth remembering

Harmonize here, now, and hereafter

In a future that needs no dreams to exist,

Which is being inexorably shaped

By the very present to which you are present.

 

*Qoheleth is the Hebrew title for the book of Ecclesiastes, commonly understood as the narrator of the book and also called the Preacher.

 

 

 

©Jedidiah Paschall – January 20, 2019