Una Voce

Here is the blurb for the book I just edited and put together, it is coming out in November. This is one of the most difficult and intense acts of creation that I've ever undertaken, to create a whole from pieces that are not yours is extremely difficult. Coming up with the obscure bits that are needed to make the whole and assembling them so that they make sense to the reader is a unique art, it is like making a mosaic. A mosaic of words.

  Una Voce - Dwalia South M.D.

 This collection of stories, poems, and letters is gleaned from the writings of Dr. Dwalia South throughout her writing career. Constructed as a compelling narrative to tell the story of an extraordinary life, from her remembrances as a young girl growing up in the hill country on the Mississippi-Tennessee border to her election as President of the Mississippi State Medical Association and beyond as she faces life’s deepest mysteries on both a professional and personal level. It chronicles both her efforts to care for the people of her hometown of Ripley, Mississippi and the effect that her vocation, life, and community have had on her as a person and as a physician.

 Dr. South’s ties to William Faulkner are far deeper than geographic or kinship. Her writing mines the wealth of history and tradition that gave rise to Yoknapataha and all those that populated it. With that same insight she tells the stories of her home state and of medicine.

 Her heartfelt reflection of the people she serves and the lives she is privileged to share changes us, and that is a hallmark of great writing.

Living In The Valley of the Shadow

These words are hard.
Think of them as small shards of crystalline truth;
I throw them out, each alone, and hope you will be struck by them.
Some may stun you with their beauty, some may cut you to the bone,
and some will do both, if I do my job at all.


I’m not always sure why I have been put here to do this job,
too many times I am the angel of death,
but sometimes I am the saver of life.
The war I fight is a war of days.
I can prevail only for a time, since all life ends.
So there is no power at all within my hands,
except to give the gift of moments.
Moments shared, moments that death comes to take.
I can not hold him off forever,
but I can sometimes say come again old friend, old nemisis, old foe.
Come again some other day hence and give us just a few more days to spend together upon this earth.

Sometimes he will listen and go for a time,
Sometimes he won’t, and sometimes the release he brings
is the only comfort that can be hoped for.

One way or another we will all find ourselves trapped in his shadow
for a time,
and all of the philosophies, religions, and beliefs we hold
will rise and fall and rise again like waves on the sea to buoy or drown us
until we arrive at some method by which
we can find a way
to live in the valley of the shadow.