Thomas Lynch, called a cross between Garrison Keillor and William Butler Yeats, reminds us not only of how we die but also of how we live.

"The facts of life and death remain the same. We live and die, we love and grieve, we breed and disappear. And between these existential gravities, we search for meaning, save our memories, leave a record for those who will remember us." So writes Thomas Lynch, poet, funeral director, and author as he continues to examine the relations between the "literary and mortuary arts."

The essays assembled here explore the human condition at the intersection of millennia, beleaguered by choices and changes, encumbered by mergers and acquisitions, numbed by math and technologies, in search of the meaning of life and time, our lives and times. Lynch tenders life and time--sextons, muckrakers, clergy, caskets, condoms, loved poems, a hated cat, the mall, the Main Street. In an age that seeks to define human experience in retail, high-tech, or pop-psyche terms, these essays speak to the existentials: between human being and ceasing to be, between birth and death, we are bodies in motion and at rest.

275 pages hardback