The Riverbank, Late Winter: Living North
March 23, 2018A lined calendar of empty trees
turns the cold
consolable. Even light this dim
is an invitation.
DiaBLOGue
The Fall of My Fiftieth Year
March 23, 2018Winter already edging down
from mountain passes, I walk past
our first town cemetery, filled with upright
markers and gold-red trees.
It’s had no vacancies for years.
Eighteen Thousand Sundowns
March 23, 2018Near a rock slope of hill pasture,
grass grows up through a few old bones.
Again, what’s moved past recall
is not past pain. White as the noon-day
Reading into Dusk
March 23, 2018On the wood porch I awake
to no sound, but a sense of some change:
light falls across an arm and
I pull back into darkness.
#939: Ambulance Unit
March 23, 2018‘Say goodbye to all
this bluddled nonsense on earth:
simple rot inside
a coffin’s a better life.
I’m now more trouble than I’m
#1071: The Banality of Evil
March 23, 2018Had I been a German in those Thirties,
I should have joined the Party:
I should have gone with the rest.
I should have condoned the persecution of the Jews.
Speaking in Tongues: A Gift of the Holy Spirit
March 23, 2018Tongues of fire. All attentive persons within traditions that accept the New Testament are at least familiar with the phrase. Certainly I remember it from childhood when I celebrated the Feast of Pentecost as an Episcopalian, although I cannot recall any personal meaning it held for me. But later, as a Catholic, I realized through my own experience that this ancient spiritual gift is still bestowed. And now, as a Mormon, I can easily identify with pioneer accounts of its appearance among Saints who so richly received revelations and manifestations of the Spirit.
Prayer for a Grandchild
March 23, 2018Let bells come
from porches and throats
of brown cows,
Imprisonment, Defiance, and Division: The History of Mormon Fundamentalism in the 1940s and 1950s
March 23, 2018The modern Fundamentalist Mormon community consists of a number of groups and many independent family clusters. The two largest are the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) centered in Colorado City, Arizona,…
The Current Philosophy of Consciousness Landscape: Where Does LDS Thought Fit?
March 23, 2018Looking out of my window across my lawn, I see a red toy wheelbarrow tipped over, abandoned beside the sidewalk. Its redness is something I experience distinctly. Undeniably, I might be deceived, and there is no red wheelbarrow there. Maybe someone painted one on the window and I am confused, or maybe I am lying mad in a hospital bed and dreaming. Perhaps it is a hallucination. It could even be that I am the victim of a maniacal government experiment in which scientists are stimulating my brain in a way that makes me think I am seeing a red wheelbarrow. Nevertheless, whatever the cause, for me it is clear—I am seeing a red wheelbarrow.