Riding Point

when she recalls them especially when she participates in the gospel scenes. The effects of the old and the new are compounded when, in "Nativity," she becomes the manger that held the baby Jesus; when in "FORASINADAMALLDIE" [sic], she and her mate, slicing apples in the kitchen, become the Edenic couple; and when in "Raising Jesus," she not only compares her duty to that of Mary, but becomes, by a stunning turn, the woman with an issue of blood (Matt. 9:20), "reaching for Your hem, craving that miracle." This is a deeply religious book, centered in a single point; it is not, however, the "still point" of Eliot's "Four Quartets." At the center of Powell's turning is most engagingly, the vision of a questioning little girl. —William Jolliff Riding Point When that last mile unwinds behind my wheels; when these wild colonnades of sunlight and shade —lavish lattice of leaf, branch, and blue— stop suddenly their flashing passage; when I fail to find the line alongside sky, or the high winter night overtakes my straying with ice and the dead extremities of starlight; and when the maps in my mind's eye fray at the folds and fall to tatters, and trails and tracks combine and collapse, resolve and dissolve in a dream terrain; then, friend, I shall recall all this, this pastime and my companions; but foremost her who followed last: and I am turning back toward the hill to where you will come down dancing, the heady silence and salt taste of waiting. —Joel McCollough 73 ...