Fast Offering
March 13, 2018Welden Shumway wasn’t so much scandalized when Brother B left his wife and took up with a young gentile woman as he was confused. Why would a priesthood holder ignore his covenants like that? Welden…
DiaBLOGue
Jesus Sakura
March 13, 2018It’s only after hanami,
Season of cherry blossom-viewing,
That I meet Christ in Fukuoka
As all the petals are leaving.
He startles me in every spent sakura—
The Lost Chapters of Moroni
March 13, 2018Zarahemla, the eternal city, is dust; as is everything that was.
In vision I see the world that comes: polio, lupus, Holocaust.
Disaster and diaspora are at once preamble and epitaph
to the good and careless God who makes me to wander and to fast
on unleavened hope to bury this last burden and be done.
The miracle is my evidence of thee: Urim,Thummim, Liahona
What Kind of Monster
March 13, 2018What kind of monster spits a wad of gum in a urinal?
Blue. Brain-folded.
Pregnant with identifying evidence.
DNA. Marks from teeth
Even Manna
March 13, 2018Even manna stops tasting sweet
after so many plates
I said to the Christmas ham,
endlessly succulent,
After the Wind
March 13, 2018God was not in the wind
and not in the earthquake.
God was not in the fire,
nor in the heavy rain
when levees breached as easily as living room walls.
The Rose Jar
March 13, 2018Musky as the cedar drawer
in Grandma’s standing metal trunk,
a genie scent, improbable and
distant as the sound of hooves on sand
Plenty: A Morning Poem at 75
March 13, 2018You do not have to do it again
any of it. Only if you care to.
You do not have to hold onto being anyone, anywhere.
Enough is more than plenty.
The Iron Rod on the Eightfold Path
March 13, 2018My brother died recently from complications after back surgery and a life of addiction. He was forty-nine. His death was hard enough, but the ensuing drama with my mother and sister—the last of my immediate family—widened the rift between us so much that I felt as if I’d lost them all.
Follow the Light, Lulie
March 13, 2018Emma Lou Thayne may have been the most expansive person I have ever met. She managed to transform every event in her life into grist for her creative mill. Accidents and illnesses that would fell a normal person formed the sculpture that was her finest work of art—her own life. She once said: “I may never be a sculptor. But in my own realms of endeavor with my own limited abilities and training—and ridiculously wide-ranging inclinations—I know this: If I focus, let go and wait, holiness will visit. The muse will whisper, the thought will arrive.”She understood that her ability to focus was the secret of many of her amazing contributions.