Ken Meisel’s book, Mortal Lullabies, is a gentle commemorative collection of poems that pay homage to themes of loss and mourning. In these poems, Meisel fixes steady attention on the anguish and the passion intrinsic to all our journeys through love and loss. The poems are pastoral, meditative pearls, flushed with an aching beauty. Asking guidance from a host of mysterious angels, deities, birds and flowers, Meisel, along with these guides, moves the reader through the stages of grief, into the opened inner light of wisdom and reconciliation. These are quiet poems culled from an inner reflecting mirror. They are tender lullabies blessed true by the late afternoon’s mellowing, mortal light.