Heart of the Fathers
April 13, 2018The Child is father to the Man Wordsworth You wake before the alarm you’d set for 4:30. You dress, almost ritually, and decide to fast. Today of all days you must maintain the proper mood—and…
DiaBLOGue
Burn Ward
April 13, 2018Late at night, the kids in their rooms come
drifting towards me, thinking of home, perhaps,
wrestling a kiss fire of pain.
And the ward is yellow with breathing,
Science: “Forever Tentative”?
April 13, 2018Although the exchange in Dialogue (Winter 1989) between Charles Boyd and David Bailey concerning the epistemological status of con temporary science was interesting and informative, in the final analysis it was lacking. To begin, Boyd…
Confessions of a Utah Gambler
April 13, 2018The old hometown, Ogden, Utah, has long been an overlooked sports town. That is, if you take the adjective overlooked in an underground or an underworld sense, and if you broaden “sporting men” to include…
Rhythms
April 13, 2018My father’s heart is strong and scarred, bound in spots by thread, a delicate patchwork of veiny fabrics. I imagine, when I talk to him on the telephone, his physical presence. I can hear his…
Sisters
April 13, 2018My sister and I had no whispered secrets
between us, shared no hollyhock days.
Why Am I Here?
April 13, 2018I found this philosophical bit by Chip Janis in In the New World (1988), a little book of poems put together by young Indian students at the Pretty Eagle School and St. Charles Mission in Ashland, Mon tana. Why am I here? It is a question most of us come face to face with. I have heard that Leo Tolstoy, after he had fathered thirteen children, helped Tsar Alexander II free the serfs, and written dozens of articles and books, still tortured himself with the question: “Why am I living?”
For Meg — With Doubt and Faith
April 13, 2018In times of drought, it is hard to remember times of flood. After yet another California winter without sufficient water, we take quick showers, rarely flush the toilet, let our lawn grow long to hide…
Being Baptized for the Dead, 1974
April 13, 2018It throbbed a little, the gash in my left palm.
I pressed the gauze, something to finger
while we waited —boys here, girls over there,
all of us wearing jump suits heavy enough
Scripture in the Reorganization: Exegesis, Authority, and the “Prophetic Mantle”
April 13, 2018From the earliest days of Mormonism, Latter Day Saints have held distinctive views about scripture. Particular, even peculiar, Latter Day Saint understandings of scripture surface at the very foundations of the movement. Historian Jan Shipps…