DiaBLOGue

A sustained tone, our conductor says, 
must narrate our belief: begin, develop, 
then patiently subside. That’s what she 
learned in the Welsh choirs of her 

Two thousand pieces, but who 
counts them? Each a puzzle 
unto itself, a question of interlocking 
limbs and sockets. Each a question 

Unload on the dresser top 
black brick cell phone, keys, 
waxy-wrapped cough drops, 
two mechanical pencils, Hertz 

Somewhere beyond our fire’s glow, 
beyond the pops and hisses of the wood, 

somewhere beyond the cool sand 
covering my feet as I curl and uncurl my toes,

When the Mormons asked sculptor Cyrus Dallin
for a statue of their Angel Moroni to top the 
Salt Lake Temple, initially he refused by saying 
he didn’t believe in angels. 

In 1886, Sister Sallie Stephensen 
of Fairview, Idaho, was possessed 
of an evil spirit for a sabbath of weeks. 
The congregation fasted and prayed, but 

“I’m sad. 
It feels like the whole world 
is inside me,” says 
my five-year-old grandson, naming, 

My grandson, ten, 
hates the rain, 
as he does this Sunday morning 
when dark clouds bring the sky down.