Ronald Wilcox

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

Prayers Public and Private

No, Father, I never got over 
that first rush of anger 
like wings folding round me 
as I discovered the world 

Post Mormon Past

I suppose I should have foreshadowed my own shadow. I should have seen what I did not want to see. That said, I must say, I see what I see for fear my shadow over-take me, for fear I become mere shadow of my former Mormon self. Formerly and formally, I tell it like it is, that is to say, “it” being what I see I say, what I say I mean, what I mean to say, I think is really me. I like to think I think so, so I say what I think. 

The Grammar of Quench

The sentence of mortality ends with a period. 
Dehydration rolled into one round sound: old. 
If I slake my thirst, I prod my prostate to rebel. 
If I desire to sin I send my soul reeling to the 

Ordinary and Profane Poems

Did you know everything all happened in one split 
microsecond after a cosmic pea exploded in a 
perfect vacuum? I will avoid the observation that  
all things we can observe therefore come from split  

Morality or Empathy? A Mormon in the Theater

Late one night last November, after a visit to Utah, I was driving across the New Mexico desert. It’s a long way from Ogden to Dallas, especially in a Volkswagen, but I’ve always found the…

Convictus or The Navigator’s Confession

“I am the captain of my soul.”  W.E.H. Well sir, I have with trickery and wicked suretyset irremediable courses, have by long habit fixed as my sole owner myself, have practically eradicated from consideration all suggestions offered freely by…

Portrait of a Puritan

Let him, who hangs between two poles (approval-disapproval), who fits or does not fit the occasion according to conscience, alone.  His will is not his own. He is the child of cant. His ubiquitous parent peers preponderantand always over the rims of thin…

Multiplicity

There has been one and one only perfect moment 
when the awful machinations of chance completely and smoothly meshed,
            each part moving in single precision, 
when the intricate multiplicity of myriad circumstance, 

Memorial Day, 1978

Morning 

My father’s body sounds, 
those noises keeping him alive, 
I hold dear and dumb, my own: 
his son’s heart pounds

Memory’s Duty

Like an irresistible green vegetation 
easing over everything in time, 
a sense of comfort crept over my mother, 
weaving into her slowly tendrils of death. 

Relativity

While a hummingbird scans it for wires 
the red rosebud explodes in slow motion, 
the two velocities firing simultaneously. 
Riddled with inconsistencies, the rose is 

Lament for My Eyes in a Mirror

I am Ron involved in me now Norma’s gone. 
Norma knew me more than my mind only. 
I know me only in eyes gone dead as mirrors. 
More than I Norma knew me in my eyes. 

Quantum Gospel: A Mormon Testimony

Symmetry exists in exact reflections of Love: 
Take a patch of chaos circling beforehand, 
Sling it past black stars circling at random, 
Create light in rings inside particled sparks, 
Glowing in random points and recognitions, 
Moving and brewing beneath your own hand.
Respond to Word of God inside your mind: 
Call the involvement creation, as the eyes 
Of the Gods gaze infinity into finite forms. 

Soul as Seen by Joseph Smith

See why soul consists of tiny stuff so small 
we see no trace when gone but body drowned
in God gives breath of splendid fire flaming ash
up the sleek flue our eyes see, to be shining sun in

Faith

To exist without beginning’s  
ultimate mystery; 
to comprehend end’s easy  
as eternity’s imagined; 

A company man on his day off

thinks of:

blue sky
not the oppressive space of huge warehouses
chopped by endless categories of air

Tao Song

We create ourselves as we go: 
            memories folding inward 
                        like bread dough kneaded, 
                                    brain convolutions, or 
                                                tangible patterns on the shore. 

Canto 12

Lightning’s no easy light to see alive reflecting  
Joseph’s mind : No magic bottle holds it nor do I
Believe it possible, try as I will to engage in mirrors
As images : how can I imagine what ignited flashing glass 

Lyric of the Larks

            Sobbing boughs above me bend,  
            Throbbing red in August wind. 

Adam Had an Eden

in mankind is the end of kind 
in woman the beginning of woe 

Letters to the Editor

Dear Sirs:  Re: Secretary Udall’s letter  The Lord has not spoken,  The Prophet is silent,  And so am I.  Alexander T. Stecker Belmont, Massachusetts  *** Dear Sirs:  You wanted a Dialogue—so now you have a dialogue;…