A quarterly journal of ideas, art, and faith
Dappled Things
Kate Bluett
I: Annunciation
Fra Angelico was definitely a man.
How many times did he paint her
caught at that improbable moment,
troubled, we’re told, by that impossible greeting,
and in every one of his images her face is piously calm. [Read more…]
Dappled Things
Sr. Mary Catherine Vukmanic, OSU
When winter came, I welcomed snow
Nor minded much that summers go,
Too glad that—though their breath is cold—
The years are white when they are old.
But now that spring has come again,
I am in love with April rain
And budding things, and happy, too,
That years are green when they are new.
[Read more…]
Dappled Things
Richard J. Rodriguez
Sed sicut scriptum est quod oculus non vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascendit quae praeparavit Deus his qui diligunt illum.
– 1 Corinthians 2:9
Reveille, Reveille!
The heralds of eternal daylight
Flip off circuit breakers, flooding
Forth electric erudition, shocking
Suns into the skies, slinging
Melancholic moons beneath the earth:
Aeterna lux, clamantis vox,
A far cry ringing newly
Out across capacious plains. [Read more…]
Dappled Things
Gabriel Olearnik
The glass upset of London is here
as unnoticed as the tides.
This river of friction
sandpapering your irises
the cuts on a thousand corneas too deep to excise.
Can we re-set jelly? Can aqueous humors run
backward in viscous currents?
No. There will always be a blackness at the centre of your eyes.
Dappled Things
John Heard
Will you live; will you live in the physical world? With the sun setting low and the shadows unfurled? Can you live with the way they make you look un-real?
– “The Taming of the Hands that Came Back to Life,” Sunset Rubdown
There must be a place where modernity is as nothing. A place that is not a philosophy department, say at some university, where a majority of professors think the modern project is either implausible or else exhausted. That is, the place cannot be post-modern in the usual, theory-inflected sense of that term. [Read more…]
Dappled Things
Paul Stilwell
What endless teeming in creation, hints
the limitlessness in the limits. You watch
one black and green field-bounder, bounder
of the blades and poles of straw, watch, intent, [Read more…]
Dappled Things
John A. Di Camillo
Peace.
Sacred silence settles on the soul.
The heart’s thin veil is gently lifted.
Her eyes, in looking out, see in.
Distortion, distraction, delusion:
Cut down by serenity’s blade,
Crimson clarity.
Life courses swiftly, silent and steady,
Unseen but softly felt,
Until now, exposed, shines bright and crimson, crimson.
Dappled Things
Sr. Mary Catherine Vukmanic, OSU
A robin sang “April.”
My heart did the same,
And a calendar hailed
The month of that name.
But nature, distracted,
Mismanaged things so;
She sent with the springtime
Not flower, but snow.
Dappled Things
Dena Hunt
She had that kind of slightly plump whiteness that needed only bare arms or stockingless legs on a new spring day to look suddenly, even startlingly, naked. Her eyes, round, slightly protruding, a pale blue and rather watery, stared into the shop window at the little black dress, so strangely out of place among the bright pastels. The smooth baby-pink edges of her heels made a little sucking sound against the soles of her backless shoes as she went inside. Why did she want this dress? Why did she want to wear this piece of mourning on this bright spring day? It seemed right. Who–or what–had died? [Read more…]
Dappled Things
Eleanor Bourg Donlon
11 July 1914
St. Mary’s College, S–
Dear R.,
I recently encountered a face from our joint past–a young earl and eager profligate, though not so young as formerly and certainly more inclined to high-minded pomposity. He obligingly provided me with your address. Although I remember well your abhorrence of all things resembling sentimentality, I own that I have thought of you often in the passing years. I shall venture into even more objectionable territory when I assert furthermore that I remember you daily in my prayers. I hope you are well and have remained safe in these anxious times. [Read more…]
