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Volume 1 Issue 3 September 2003 LINK TO TEXT ONLY VERSION Robert Blair Kaiser: A Letter from the Editor POETRY  Henry Braun: Mother Of All Bombs R.W. French: A Day in March H.R. Stoneback: God's Trout: Fisher King & Delta Force Recon the Upper Tigris ROME DIARY  Robert Blair Kaiser: Latest Chapter Rome Diary Index VATICAN II  Australian Broadcasting Company: Radio Discussion on Vatican II   Kelly Burke: Blessed are the Once Married   Bill Burrows: The Erosion of Catholic Culture   José Comblin: Changes in the Latin American Church During the Pontificate of John Paul II   John J. Deeney: Vatican II: Before, During, and After — Some Personal Anecdotal Reflections   Robert Blair Kaiser: Notes Toward An Essay on Vatican II   Virginia Saldanha: Vatican II Brought Wholeness to Life   Ingrid Shafer: The Vision of Vatican II   Jon Sobrino, SJ: A New Council (English) Un Nuevo Concilio (Español)   Leonard Swidler: A Catholic Constitution for the Catholic Church   WOMEN Sr. Maria José Arana, RSCJ: To Ransom the Feminine in order to Re-animate the Earth (English) Rescatar Lo Femenino Para Re-Animar La Tierra (Español)

Mother Of All Bombs    With your permission    the only animal that runs toward fire    to save, to gawk, to liven up the night,    cancels with fire the quick networks of borders.    I celebrate, with your permission, the borders    of human beings, the profiles lifting and turning    in drivers' seats, the parallels that bend    and meet at the tear ducts of the eye.    No longer frightened of fontanels,    I touch the soft craters of the mind cap    and root my nose gratefully in whorls    of babies' ears. I celebrate the skin,    the curves of women, the straight hips of men,    my hand with its own life    and tiny Pavlovian memories    of cusps in the arms of chairs and handkerchiefs    drawn like cold brooks through the fingers.    I sing the damaged hands of les Eyzies,    and Friday's footprint,    triangles in tempera of the holy.    As over the hump of windowsill more evening    crawls, I contemplate full moons    of countdown, after nine of which we come    with hanks of cord trailing from our bellies.    I celebrate, with your permission, the bellies,    the treasure kegs of aging males,    big bodies coming out of showers,    and the taut ramparts of little girls.    The approaching sine curve of an elbow    gazed at and touched by a pregnant woman,    I gaze at, and also touch, then sing    the double string between the eyes of lovers.    Faces, known and unknown, delineate    like the moon suddenly in breaks of cloud.    I celebrate and sing    all the beloved faces, all, M.O.A.B.,    and tickle the cittern for the cloud as well.    I wave as if positioned for goodbye    and, at the same time, for hello    in the borderless shadow of the lingam.    Henry Braun Henry Braun, author of "Mother Of All Bombs" lives in the Maine woods where he fishes for poems, feeds a woodstove, and eavesdrops on the hum of airplanes flying overhead. Others of his eavesdroppings will appear in future issues of Just Good Company. His phone number and extensive photos of his ambience are on http://www.tumbledown.org/, of which he is the Webmaster. For a photo/discussion of MOAB, see: http://www.twin-towers.net/ moab_bomb.htm

Statement of Purpose Prospectus How You Can Help Subscriptions Directions for Submissions Authors Editors Editorial Advisory Board Connections Correspondence JGC Archives Privacy Policy Webpage Editors:  Ingrid H. Shafer, Ph.D. ecumene.org Robert R. Rahl westcoastcompanions.org Posted 1 September 2003 Revised  4 September 2003