Of All Saints, and One

by Mark S. Burrows

Dancing, in mind at least, toward a stage of untested embrace—    Virginal spirits grasped in the shared, unexpected spectacle             Of one season’s end, and another’s hesitant . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Nov 1992

By the Road South of Fairplay, Georgia

by Diane Bonds

It assaults the eye, the Ponder familygraveyard, with twin obelisks visiblehalf a mile away.  . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 1992

Paraphrase of Some Famous Lines in Spanish Literature

by Anthony Kerrigan

I will become dust and you will become dust and ashes our tongues and ashes our eyes but, ever beloved and empassioned dust, our embers will last as long as the skies.—Anthony . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Feb 1991

Mortality: The Measure of Our Days

by Gilbert Meilaender

Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all.  —King Lear For much of human history death was associated at least as much with infancy and youth as with old age. To live to be old was an achievement—a modest victory over death, and one often . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Feb 1991

Root Cellar

by James M. Deschene

Moving in the cool cellar gloom Among the dusty bulbs and withered tubers Of last year’s old dispensation, I marveled at their mummy masquerade: Dry as death, their brittle skin flaking Under my curious fingers, there they lay. Half-burnt embers of a secret . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 1991

Scene From a Living Room

by Camille S. Williams

In that house of quiet dying, through still sheers that turn the day to gray, only two chairs of six are sat upon, the bed no longer shared. She smiles, a 5 x 10 on the television top, he laughs, a young man upon the mantle. But, air unmoving from dining room to kitchen old woman watches TV alone, . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 1990

Binx and the Malaise

by Paul Greenberg

I heard the news in late May as I was walking into the Sno-White Cafe here in Pine Bluff, Ark. Walker Percy died, Roger Coley told me. Roger is a Mississippi boy who’s now design editor at the Pine Bluff Commercial. Newspapers have titles like Design Editor these days. He stopped in front of the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Nov 1990

Hank Gathers and Cultural Christianity

by Gilbert Meilaender

When the Loyola Marymount basketball team, riding the crest of an emotional high after the death of star player Hank Gathers, was making its spirited run in the NCAA basketball tournament last spring, CBS did a short feature on Gathers before one of the team’s games. At one point. Brent Musberger . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Aug 1990

Forward to the Seventies

by John Strietelmeier

As I write these words, it is exactly one week before my seventieth birthday”“the days of our years,” according to the Psalmist; the day “the warranty runs out,” according to a friend of mine. Today is also the twenty-fourth anniversary of my father’s death, four months and ten days . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 1990