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 OPENINGS
PIlgrimage, Volume 31 Issue 2
Summer 2006
The pursuit of happiness takes many
forms in Volume 31 Issue 2 (Sum-
mer 2006) of Pilgrimage. In “Poets
in America,” Robert Dawson recalls
his own calling as a poet and some
of the complexities that came with
it. In “The Blue Beacon,” David Ray
considers the economic gravity that
pulls a young man north from Guate-
mala to the borderlands of the United
States and Mexico. Brenda Liebling-
Goldberg considers the plight of a
romantic Francophile in Alvin, Texas.
Kim Stafford (“Highway 83 North /
Out of Liberal / 5am”) takes us out
on the road in pursuit of connection
with family.
From Steel by Mike Adams
“. . .What I’ll always remember of that time is midnight clouds, half the sky glowing red
with the fire of oxygen blown through a cauldron of steel, white roaring fire at the heart
of a blast furnace, waterfalls of steel as ladles empty into ingot molds, the scream of
steel crushed and flattened in the 5-foot rollers of the hot rolling mill. And the dance
of soft, frail bodies amidst great machines and fire.”
From The Blue Beacon by David Ray
“
At night he set out, and by the time a crimson streak appeared over the eastern
mountains Juan was crawling, standing every hour or so to look for the blue beacon.
And then he spotted it, though it was pale in the sun. Still, it pulsed, beckoned, leading
him to his new home. He would stand in el centro, the main plaza. And he would go to
a cathedral and pray for even more glorious success in the second half, and he would
pray for Blanca and all the family. Because now he had found The Way, the way north,
the way to freedom, the way to a good life.”
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