A hummingbird, ornamented
with emerald and ruby plumage,
greets me. From the feeder, a tinsel-thin beak
extracts sugar water. I, too, drink—
orange juice, slowly—while those wings blur.
Hovering by a string of Christmas lights,
the hummingbird examines green,
red, green, red. Then he glides
into the holy future. I’m left wingless.

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Anabella Schofield is a poet and children's book author from California. She loves to craft wonder-filled works, especially in collaboration with her twin sister.

               Who sees open windows with closed eyes?

The ice stretches deep below our home,
down to aquifers filled by ancient storms.

My silhouette opens lost worlds;
yours shines forth ours;
below, our ice grows ever downward.

Daily we live in perfect parallel,
ever equal, never reaching, never kissing.
Our conscious sky radiates but its honest self,
in calm, tornado green.

Our eyes cannot close—
not to our world—not to lost worlds—
without feeling a crack of growing ice.

Scientists say we sleep better in the cold.
Perhaps, sleeping in frozen air, we do reach.

               Perhaps our ice does kiss?

— after Annie K Blake’s painting “We Live Close By”

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Theric Jepson is the current editor of Irreantum. His novel Just Julie’s Fine has some Greek letters but no Greek words and only for math reasons. thmazing.substack.com

Easter Triptych

The sunsets over door-posts fade to gloom  
as praise and wailing mingle in one song.
Now free to follow God through fire and cloud,
we gaze beyond the serpent-sceptered priest, 
	
who broke and crushed himself in that dark room
and garden, who with bruised heel tread upon   
the crown; who shouldered exile for the crowd
condemning him in our redemption feast,

which finished with sunrise breaking from the tomb,
with gnashing teeth and hallelujahs drawn
at once from every mouth unwound of shroud—
we squint, cold faces lightening from the east.

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Kevin Klein is an elementary teacher and writer from Orem, Utah. His LDS-themed poetry has appeared in Irreantum, Dialogue, and BYU Studies. His family is, among other things, one of his favorite sources of inspiration and feedback.

Prologue

1

This prison house of mine would ill-annoy,

As if a Punic enemy to stop,

This hallow-handed work progressing on;

A knee, yes, everyone shall bend thereto.

And though I die before the place is done,

Wherein the way to Other’s known apart,

I mean herein to signify the times,

And seasons when the way appeared to me.

2

O prison guard, as thou hast preyed me here,

Thou art or shalt become the man I tell,

My history, the which no man has known;

The wisdom of a king whose death was well;

Of where I learned of liberty in chains;

Or when the river men appeared to me;

Of books for breathing words beyond the page

Revealing worlds unknown ‘til latter days.

3

Though tacit to repute or signal-make,

I am in style and office owing to,

The false reports of persons ill-disposed,

Induced to disabuse the public mind,

As well to write the lady most elect

Who chased away all vain philosophy

And me consoled and scribed my poetry—

—although it’s lost, what all she wrote for me.

4

As it was said: no greater love’s than this

Than life laid down for friends but what is life

If nothing to my friends until laid down?

‘Tis love like that in lambs to slaughter led

Or sheep before the shearer standing dumb;

At least and last I came with conscience clear

And mind that lacks a fence to separate

Myself from heav’n which is where’er I fly.

From the Rivers to be Seized

5

The first day very early after I

Came down the hill with word in hand and sat

Before the lady most elect that she

Could see the tablets, she began to weep;

Thought I my countenance had given fright;

Full-lit it was and shone when I came nigh.

She bade me veil the plates until the day

The Messenger would carry them away.

6

And thus it was the lady touched them not

Until they had ascended from the press

That fed five thousand who were made to sit

And read amid the fragments I took up.

And when she saw it made among the reads,

She could no longer hide but took for it,

Her vessels shattered to enlight the walls,

Of where the readers had been made to sit.

7

It was the first, at last, the place we built,

Wherein the way to Other’s known apart;

The pattern of it all by spirit had,

According to what Other showed to me.

For in our midst was Other though unseen,

But soon to come: the day to see and know,

And part the veil of darkness o’er the mind,

And blest by Mercy pure to Justice see.

8

In facing East it looks to Other’s rise,

And reads He will establish in His strength;

‘Pon entering’s a court where’s bread to shew,

His presence after pray’r from altered hearts.

The court is lit by windows branching ‘round,

In shape as upturned almonds at the top.

Behind the veil that separates the host:

A pulpit to be overlaid with gold.

9

A pulpit, in the Greek, is many-foot;

Appropriate where such were manifest.

Upon the breastwork of the pulpit stood,

A foot when shod’s beyond me to unshod.

There spread where e’er that sacred foot impressed

A pavéd work of gold like amber wave.

From underneath His eyes that shown with fire

There billowed forth His voice with wat’ry rush.

10

It was the first, at last, Who stands before

Us all to plead with Justice on behalf

Of us for whom He was beatitude.

‘Mid us He died and life again betook

For us that all our sin He may belie,

And us our head lift up in joy He bids,

Rejoicing us, accepts the place we built;

It was the last, at first, we stood before.

11

So in the place we built had Other come

To us in Mercy as He’d come to me

When I had reached the fanum in the wood;

For we the will of heaven’s Justice do,

And not as those content to say, “Lord, Lord,”

To Other nor pollute the place we built.

In consequence His blessing He pours out

‘Pon tens of thousand-thousands in His house.

12

And when the sight of Other closed to us,

From heav’n again another conduit:

Before us standing now a river’s son

Who like me saw a word in nature lit

And like me brought a volume forth from it;

As I, so he brought tablets from on high

And built a tabernacle as a place

According to what Other showed to him.

13

The river’s son stood forth, his staff in heft,

No horns preceding him but head arrayed

With light that shone as he to us came nigh;

Upon a mount he anciently declared

So much of Other’s law as was received.

At time’s meridian another mount

Whereon his figure crossed was Other’s will;

And now in Other’s wake to us appeared.

14

To us committed he the gathering

Of all the fathers and their families

Whose struggle in the face of Justice gave

A name to reach the four parts of the earth;

To lead from out the diasporic north

An exodus tenfold in magnitude

To fill the north and south and all the world.

The key t’unlock the scattered’s given me.

15

Although the river’s son on pulpit stood

And saw the promise Other swore to him,

Upon our land unto our utmost sea

He came not hither: Other had forbade.

Mine eye had dimmed to weep the river’s son

For he had laid his hands upon my head

And gave me full the spirit of wisdom

As he and I knew Other face to face.

16

And when the river’s son had left our sight

There next appeared a man unknown to writ

But known to those writ of in ancient time;

This man had dwelt between two rivers since

He ’ccompanied the house by Other called

To have posterity as prophesied

That’s fixed in one but numbered as the stars

And as the sand whence Other’s line is drawn.

17

The man unknown beheld as I foresee;

The flight of both our peoples o’er the plains;

As well the loss of any looking back,

A saline memory best trodden down.

As I, the man unknown was witness to

The sight of Other and three messengers

That every generation after us

Should blesséd be in us and in our seed.

18

With this good spell committed unto us

The man unknown withdrew to whence he came.

I did not later learn just who he was

Or had been when he was a mortal man;

The man unknown had never raised a knife

Against a son nor took a battle tithe;

He was a messenger for Other’s sake

Which done, it mattered not where e’er he went.

19

Upon us burst another vision great

And glorious, another messenger

Who anciently was hidden at a brook

Before the river that would overflow

The head of Other as our pattern shows.

The hidden man had long partaken of

A meal twice daily borne of wing o’erhead

But never once of death did he partake.

20

The hidden man who stood before us spake

Of children as the end of father’s heart

And father’s as the end of every child;

As well he said the time was fully come

The very time by ancients spoken of,

That he, the hidden man, be sent before

The day of dread and greatness at the door

The day when Other treads the earth again.

21

Therefore into our hands committed he

The dispensation o’er against the curse

That overhangs the whole of earth unless

A seal is made of links that wind between

The arms and hands of generations passed

And yet to come in one eternal now;

Without the chain forged in the place we built,

The day when Other come’s a waste and curse.

22

But seized were we, O prison guard, not long

Beyond the time within the place we built

When we from rivers three had messengers;

Yea, seized from out the midst of family,

And made to see a sword upon them drawn

That creeped the closer as they drew to me,

And made were we to see in Liberty

What Other underwent and hath o’ercome.

23

Though borne in chains, in everything made free

As Other taught: to serve is mastery.

For as in Adam or by nature all

Are fallen that Other may condescend

Beneath all things with Mercy that He know

To succor us in our infirmity

According to the flesh and give the blot

Beneath the sight of Justice to our sins.

24

And thus I fell and ‘til I was restored

I fancied none had felt as low as I;

Myself as whelmed the most excepting none.

Perhaps I had known favor previous

But failing that, inadequate thereto,

There’s naught but disappearance left me now.

What joy remains resides in those I left,

For lacking me supplies the joy I take.

25

“O Other, where art thou?” said I for me,

As all perform in deepest tragedy

Of self when self requires another stage

’Pon which to drop its tears and cheer its rage.

I wept the blood my people had foregone

As if unknown to One Besmeared Upon.

And when the wickedness was out me bled,

My self had gone and Other come instead.

26

I heard His voice, O prison guard, and “Son”;

His peace was unto me as He’d begun

To mete the brevity of all my woes

And promise yet a triumph o’er my foes.

He spake to me the trust and loyalty

I had in friends, unlike antiquity

When Job, deprived of health and wealth and kin,

Was heaped upon by friends alleging sin.

27

When from the hellish mouth of Liberty

I could desert its gaping after me,

We set our capitol upon the banks

Whose currency was river-fed in thanks

To Other Whose command to beautify

Our Commerce newly-gained would show that I

Am as the messengers who came to me

A river man composing prophecy.

In Letters

28

Within the city we have lately built

Where I was safe—at least from enemies—

A little past two years ‘ere presently,

There came to me a letter to request

The whence and whither of the work that I

Am called and authorized of Other to

Establish in these final days before

The burnéd world’s astretch and rolled again.

29

But how, O prison guard, I asked myself,

Does one contain th’eternal in a word?

Before you cite the logos unto me,

Recall that wordplay’s not divinity.

‘Tis strange how those who lean on books the most

Are least inclined to entertain their source;

The source of Holy Writ’s a constant flow

And never fully poured in single draft.

30

A creed, a creed, are there not many creeds?

And still they ask of me another creed?

O fools, who chain my faith fast as my flesh,

Confine my mind and sever every tie

That holdeth quick to One Besmeared Upon,

I here thee give a creed that never ends.

Connected as it were to Other such

That further light from Twofold One is known.

31

‘Ere I embark to freight the articles

To anchor those upon the sacred main

That maketh all who sail thereon as saints,

I would address the mariners themselves:

The anchor in the sea ‘pon which ye sail

Is as a principle that’s founded on

Irrevocable doctrine lest ye think

That overboard’s a depth that ye can plumb.

32

Before ye sally back that Other once

In Holy Writ—whereat, ye can’t recall—

But only that He once tread on the sea

And even bid a rock to “come to me,”

Recall at least he bid to tread the top

And not to probe the deep which as the truth

Is great and dreadful past thy looking eye;

Remain where Other placed that rock to see.

33

The first by which we ought be understood

—And last, most like, our enemies will grant—

Is that in Twofold One we do believe,

Yea, Justice and His Mercy over all,

And Other Who’s the One Besmeared Upon

And in the Spirit that proceeds of these,

A personage, in truth, that knoweth all,

And fetterless to better feed the most.

34

Our enemy, who ought to be our friend

And brother in so great a cause as this,

Will take my words and accusation make

That we some other Savior introduce

Or make ourselves as gods who make more worlds.

To these inimic friends I would explain:

In body have I grasped the promises

Philosophy diluted anciently.

35

The second, ‘haps my sin original

That us from man divides more than from God,

Is that upon each man, we do believe,

A punishment will be for every sin

By each man done, and that respectively;

No son shall bear the weight of father’s sin,

And this from us ‘til even Adam ‘cept

For Other Who bore all for Twofold One.

36

While some hold man condemned before his birth,

More yet consider him by Adam cursed

Or worse than these: that Eve hath failed us all;

I stand apart declaring every man

Bears no more sins than unrepented of,

For as in Adam, or in nature, all

Are fallen, it is so that man may be,

And being might have joy through Other free.

37

The third, in essence, cent’ring what I teach

With all the rest appendages thereto,

Is that mankind is saved, we do believe,

And all of them, at least as many may

Who of their own free will and choice obey

What ordinance and law exampled in

The life of Other and by Justice giv’n,

That all made one to Them may enter in.

38

Between my should-be friends in Other’s cause

There rages on a controversy o’er

The nature of salvation, whether ‘tis

Upon the things we do or hardly so

Because what Other wrought is warrantless;

To each I give my hand affirming both,

For Other made infinity a gift

Commanding us to do good works for it.

39

The fourth, which hath to do with what good works—

or principles and ordinance—we do,

Is that, from first ‘til fourth, we do believe

To start with faith in One Besmeared Upon,

Which leads the penitent to think again

Or think beyond: not be, but to become,

Until immersed in waters, sin-remised,

And breathed upon by ghostly-handed gift.

40

In these consists what Other’s doctrine is

And there the gate for entering therein

Upon the way that Other represents;

From these to stray’s contending with the rock

For such are these: a rock amid the sea

That roiling o’er is poor theology.

Receipt alone of sacrament will serve

To light the way ‘pon which all must endure.

41

The fifth which lit on me in boyhood first

And then again whene’er the work required

Is that a man is called, we do believe,

Of Justice with His Mercy hallowing,

And that by prophecy and manumised

To hear and speak and teach of Other’s will

As well to give the patterns and the forms

Of Other’s life to all who follow Him.

42

Though some there are who stake authority

Upon tradition and antiquity

And some, protesting their inheritance,

Asserting independence from the trunk,

Will stake authority upon the roots

They hope to grow of branches broken off,

I stand apart from these, conversing deep,

With one who owns the vineyard and the tree.

43

The sixth, in line with what authority

By which I do the things appointed me,

Is that the offices, we do believe,

Conferred by Other on a dozen souls,

As well as those with charge to speak for Him,

And those that give to watch and teach His flock

—to message all the good of Other’s spell—

That once existed are to us restored.

44

Would not, O prison guard, ye think to find

Within a house the trappings of its lord?

And would ye not expect the servants there

To move and act upon th’authority

Upon them by their lord placed handily?

What if, on ent’ring in, ye found a change

In frame, appurtenance, and hired hands?

Must not the lord’s demesne needs be restored?

45

The seventh, from the latest following

And touching on that same lord’s legacy,

Is that in gifts and signs we do believe;

In singing out in Adam’s tongue or Eve’s;

In prophecy and revelations seen

With eyes for glory by transfiguring;

In making wholly sound the fallen man

And making fallen man a holy sound.

46

Ought not we find the same activities

Exampled by a lord to hirelings

Whene’er we venture to investigate

Whate’er it is remains of his estate?

What if we find a strange philosophy

Where once had been a lordly poetry?

And reason stretched to logic o’er a loss

That shows where thief broke through as rust and moth?

47

The eighth, indeed another great offense

That’s taken though not given with intent,

Is that in Holy Writ we do believe

As far as borne across sufficiently—

Which is to say in language rendered true—

To understanding and to whence it came.

We like believe that Other’s witnessed in

The record once sepulchred now aris’n.

48

And what is meant in this, “To bear across,”

I heretofore have said but once again:

It is the power and gift of Other giv’n

Of which all are invited to partake.

It makes a letter’s spirit and its law

At one, to resurrect th’original

Redeemed, a voice to speak out of the dust,

As testament to One Besmeared Upon.

49

The ninth, upon us pouring every drop

From heaven let regardless of the spout,

Is that in every truth we do believe

Regardless of the time whence it came out,

As well as all continuing to fall

From heaven, quickening before the sun.

We like believe more things of great import

Will fall throughout the reign of Twofold One.

50

The light and truth of Other usward flows

Through channels worn by ancient messengers

Which runneth o’er our shoulders presently,

Invested there by hands that fished of men.

Though all may take the light and truth on them,

To some is giv’n to hold positions key

And fill the body as tributaries

Replenished through the reign of Twofold One.

51

The tenth, which hath to do with property

And its dispersal to posterity,

Is that in gathering, we do believe,

Into the land of Other’s covenant

With ancient fathers and their families;

As well as on a separate continent

Shall gather we of latter covenant;

That earth renews with Other as our king.

52

The earth and all its parts are bodily

As we: a spirit closed-in physically

And subject as it were to Other’s laws

As I described in article the fourth.

And therefore as on us so on the earth

Must come a fervent heat and scrolling up

And then a greater change when Other comes

Receiving glory as in Eden had.

53

The ‘leventh, being universally

Desirable to thinking, living things,

Is that to worship Twofold One we claim,

According to our conscience dictating,

And not exclusively be this on us

But holding forth to all the freedom that

We would have held to us—let worship be

Whate’er or how or what they may believe.

54

And lest, O prison guard, ye think of me

As libertine regarding deity,

I here declare the way and only way

To glory is to take on Other’s name

By keeping His commands and ordinance.

The freedom that I claim reflects the truth

That freely must we claim the absolute;

Compulsion hath no place in Twofold One.

55

The twelfth, reflecting whence comes every power

Within the offices of mortal hour,

Is that in making subject, we believe,

Ourselves unto the fealty of kings,

As well to duly ‘lected presidents,

To rulers, magistrates, and cabinets;

The law, with Twofold One as foundation,

We shall obey with honor and sustain.

56

Now something that I know better than most

Is to what depth the government of men

Will plummet when their hearts are turned against

The Constitution usward heaven sent.

But over and beyond the grievances

That grieve my heart, I’m still not greater than

The One Besmeared Upon Who fished a fee

And paid the tax of man for me and thee.

57

The thirteenth of these articles of faith,

By which at least we ought be understood,

Is that in doing good we do believe,

To all indeed with chastest honesty,

In virtue true and ever well-wishing;

In everything we hope and shall endure;

In anything worth good report or praise

We follow and seek after, I may say.

58

And what is good that we should hot pursue?

The good is what directs to Twofold One

As well as everything that flows therefrom.

A great more things are good than commonly

Supposed to be and this on account of

The difficulty thorning ‘round the good;

We don’t forsake the ending for the path

Because we make mistakes ‘tween first and last.

59

So went the letter, for whate’er it’s worth,

That asked the whence and whither of the work

That I’m of Other called and authorized

T’establish in these final days before

The time of Other’s coming in the clouds.

Does it contain the fullness of the work

Or speak of every circumstance to come?

Not so, for Other’s work is never done.

60

Thus in the city we have lately built

Along a river, called to prophesy,

I dwelt where Main and Water intersect,

Inclined to give my days to family

And friends and things most worthy of study;

Such things and languages in Holy Writ,

Both reading and revealing things in it,

When ‘round there came a great antiquity.

To Be Published…

61

By Providence there came a sight to me

As I beheld a curiosity;

A vision of an ancient father’s hand

That wrote of stars and premortality,

Which writing serves as ur- to papyri

That I translated at Other’s command.

The time and season when it came to pass

Is as the letter I was telling last.

62

The vision came to me in episodes

Accompanied by illustrations three.

The first gave witness to a sacrifice

That foundered on account of Other’s grace;

The second, a depiction of the path

Whereon the devotee finds Other’s hand;

The third, a sharing of the principles

‘Pon which the world, by Other, came to be.

63

The first presents a human sacrifice,

A rank corruption idolizing vice

That ne’ertheless gave shadow to portend

The sacrifice that would all others end;

As well the victim in this very scene

Had need to know the great necessity

Of sacrifice in Other’s goodly spell:

That overcoming starts beneath a hell.

64

Deliverance is come, the first depicts,

And snatches everyone from out the midst

Of death and hell, whoever calls upon

The name of Other and turns not therefrom

Unto the blood of children offered up

To idols by their fathers hewn in rough.

But seek for blessings as a rightful heir

And tread the path for patriarchs prepared.

65

The second of the images I saw

Preserved a knowledge of the earth and stars,

Back from myself to ‘ere the world was made,

Which I shall here endeavor to report.

I saw the star most nigh to Twofold One

Which governs all to what I stand upon;

Its time is reckoned after Other’s time,

For it is set most nigh to Other’s throne.

66

Intelligence, the second image shows,

Was organized before the world was made

By Twofold One; our Parents Heavenly

Came down into our midst, our first estate.

‘Tis here depicted in eternal round,

Containing words that cannot be revealed

Outside the place we built, and represents

The grand key-words and signs of Twofold One.

67

The third, a coronation ritual,

Depicts the faithful seated as an heir

Discoursing on the path that brought him there.

His glory’s not confined to situal;

Upon his head’s a crown of circling light,

Authority’s upon his shoulder dight.

Such is the wedding Other doth extend

To all the garmented who will attend.

68

The third, at last, precedes the great embrace

That purges from the faithful every trace

Of separating fallenness entire,

Consumed in Justice’ everlasting fire,

Becoming one with He Who ever reigns

Although distinct in body to remain.

I ought reveal no more at present time,

But all the veil shall part at Other’s sign.

69

When still within the city we had built,

Not long beyond the time of publishing

My vision writ by ancient father’s hand,

There was a king who deep within the earth

Was crushed beneath the weight of meaning well

Which gave occasion, at his funeral,

For me to preach the simple truth of heav’n

To those with eyes that see and ears that hear.

70

I ask your prayers and faith, O prison guard,

To be instructed by the Twofold One,

That I may have the Spirit as a gift

And of the truth your heart and mind convict.

There are but few who rightly understand

The character of those Almighty Ones,

The Twofold One and One Besmeared Upon,

I ask you now, what kind of being These?

71

You cannot know yourself and not know Them.

They are in form and fashion like ourselves,

Exalted men enthroned in yonder heav’n,

And women, too, as Eve and Adam both

Were fashioned in Their likeness and image.

We have imagined and supposed that They

Were deity from all eternity;

I that refute and show that you may see.

72

To know Them is to have eternal life

As learning Them means reaching each degree

They reached in Their becoming deity.

As every man divine, beside his wife,

Has grown from small to great capacity,

Now dwells in glory everlastingly.

Believe it if you trust in Holy Writ;

‘Tis possible with Them enthroned to sit.

73

I have an old copy of Holy Writ

With Hebrew as the primal tongue in it.

Alongside that is Greek which second came

Of seventy in Egypt or Mizraim.

As well there’s Latin with authority

Inviting us to look as Romans see.

At last is German, mighty to expound,

And closest to the truth as I have found.

74

The first word in the sacred record hath

Within its parts a meaning I contrast

To how the learnéd have translated it:

“In the beginning” misses berosheit,

Which references the Council of the Gods

Brought forth by Twofold One Who oversaw

Th’arranging of eternal element

Into the world for our development.

75

And what of us is sent into this world?

Our spirit is intelligence divine

And hath no start nor any ending time.

Conception is a dressing up in flesh

With blood to circulate mortality

And flow until replaced with quickening.

I challenge all the learnéd when I say

Numquam Deus poterat creare.

76

Such was my discourse o’er the fallen king,

As asked to give by all his family.

Two months it’s been and twenty days about

Since I addressed my people standing out

Within a grove just as on that Spring day

When fourteen years ago I went to pray.

What’s left to tell, o prison guard, except

My life, permitting sacred things be kept?

The Lady Most Elect

77

Unlike this swelter shackling our mirth,

A wintry season wrapped around my birth;

Though little fish I was in life at first,

Deep water is my wont, to swim immersed.

Long has th’Accuser rabbled after me

For being chief disturber of his peace.

I cannot truly tell you who I am

Except ye seek my blood with stone in hand.

78

My youth was spent in toilsome work of hands

That left us rather spent than handsome lads;

My visage marred, astonishing to see,

My leg inflamed, requiring surgery.

I took my work where’er my work took me,

Of silver linings mindful as can be.

In such pursuits was I when first beset

In bosom by the lady most elect.

79

I found her, hailed and knelt, and she found me,

A smith to blow the coals and we agreed

T’abide in love, commitment and in trust,

And this before the squire who married us.

She stood beside a rise consider’ble

Awaiting me, my hands with scripture full.

She sat beside a table every night,

The light and knowledge Other sent to write.

80

Together we, illumined of the plates,

Produced a text that from the dust relates

The visions of a man at Other’s call

Who left Jerusalem to stand or fall

According to the consequence of sin

And not withstand the Babylonian

Who threw down every wall ‘gainst him opposed,

Which walls I never had before supposed.

81

She promised and I trusted when she said

That she had never thought or made attempt

To lift the veil I left upon the plates

As she pursued her work with me away.

I know, however, when she was alone,

Not taking down the words shown o’er my stone,

She’d reach within the veil and fan a page

To hear the rustle witness of its age.

82

‘Twas not to last, our writing arrangement;

For owing to the creeping discontent

Of one invested much in my support

Whose contribution was of such import

That I gave countenance to his request,

Releasing all she’d writ at his behest

Which taking he endeavored to convince

They faithless of the book we strove to print.

83

Three times did I approach the endless throne,

Refusing to accept the final tone

With which I had been answered at the first

As if what man can do is all the worse

Than Other when He’s trampled underfoot;

And still, His Holy Spirit I withstood,

As if the first commandment to exchange

With what I’ve learned’s the second’s lesser range.

84

The manuscript was lost, as I had feared,

And ne’er for all my pleading to appear

Or else th’Accuser alter what’s been writ

And have wherewith to damp belief in it.

The lady most elect maintained her place

Beside me, like a sign of Other’s grace.

Alas, what’s done was done and she refused

To write for me and see more work abused.

85

She tested me with little tolerance

For vanities; I often took offence

And graceless I would give the utmost vent

To accusation and then sore repent.

For though she wrote no longer, I soon found

The gifts I had were to the lady bound;

If peace I lacked with her, I had no sight

To see the words that came in Other’s light.

86

She chased away all vain philosophies

That mixed with Holy Writ o’er centuries.

For in them she detected every wile

Employed against the mother to beguile

Her daughters into feeling incomplete

Except against a man they should compete,

As if the worth of any woman lies

In the extent that she herself decries.

87

To her did Other give to welcome lives

Whom Other took away above our sighs.

For which we blessed the name of Other Who

Alone hath pow’r to resurrect, unto

The joy of faithful parents, children lost

For whom He bore an everlasting cost.

Let it be understood that through our praise

We walked the shady valley many days.

88

Though always Twofold One is governing,

Th’Accuser and his angels can, it seems,

Defy the laws and human decency

Whene’er it suits their diabolic glee.

Two children we’d adopted in the place

Of two we’d lost were taken from their space

Of sleeping by a mob intent on me;

The younger perished in his infancy.

89

Another instance when she guided me

Arose amid a meeting’s aftermath.

With smoke o’erhead and tarring underfoot,

She wondered should I not seek further light

On where a man’s defiled, ‘tis out or in?

Inquiring of the One Besmeared Upon

Resulted in a principle against

The evil that exists in hearts of men.

90

When I was fast in chains of Liberty

My people suffered deep in misery.

An order was decreed with evil rife

T’exterminate us out of land or life.

My people were deprived of property,

Despoiled of freedom and of chastity.

My family was not excused of plight;

My wife and children fled in dead of night.

91

The winter bit with wind and icy ground,

No light except from fires burning down

Their homes and things that made their houses home,

They left a scene that ate them skin to bone.

It was so cold my lady tread a lake,

Our children bleeding footprints in their wake.

She thought of me as they were hastening;

A manuscript swung from her apron string.

92

A river’s worth of misery she tread,

An icy path beneath her footstep dead.

No one but Other knows her heart and mind,

Her feelings and reflections at that time.

She carried ‘neath her skirt a manuscript

Containing further light on Holy Writ.

The lady, like a spirit o’er the deep,

Brought forth the word of Other faithfully.

93

A different time, before the misery,

The lady most elect a call received

From One Besmeared Upon to search among

The songs of folk throughout all Christendom

Who wrote with real intent and sincere heart

To witness Other’s glory through their art;

As I, she gave a volume to the saints

That testified of glory through His name.

94

And should I tell thee now, O prison guard,

Of messengers engirt with flaming sword?

Would ye believe that flame near-licked my skin

When it was only inches ‘neath my chin?

Commanding me at first on pain of death

And then implying sin if I regressed

Again from that which Other had decreed:

Restore His covenants made anciently.

95

‘Twas not my will to drink that bitter cup

But that His will be done, I drank it up.

I died that day and every moment since

Requiring yet again my heart be split

Between my ever-growing family

And He Who suffered in Gethsemane.

Expecting ye shall not believe, at last,

I shall abstain, and sacred things o’er pass.

96

I organized the men in our city

According to divine authority;

Discerning little good if on his own,

I set to work, that he not toil alone.

I turned the priesthood key on the behalf

Of woman, thus ordaining the distaff

To the extent that Other hath me willed,

Until within the place He said to build.

97

The lady most elect was called to take

The lead o’er all the women in the stake;

A president to them, with counselors,

Which two she would select to stand with her.

As it was needful that they take a name

A latter-day Apostle to them came

Asserting what he thought the name should be,

‘til rightly overruled by my lady.

98

Among the first of causes they took on

Was oversight of what the workers don

Whene’er they undertook to build the house

Commanded us by Other for His cloud

With which he overshadowed anciently

A tabernacle where to rest His feet.

‘Tis in this place we build to Other meet

And learn of Him how to approach His seat.

99

Within this house, or Holy Temple called,

We shall receive the covenants of old

To kings and queens and priests and priestesses

Administered and enter Other’s rest.

‘Tis also there the path of Twofold One,

From sun to moon to star and back to sun,

Is shown to us and how to navigate

The patterns constituting Heaven’s gate.

100

The place wherein I’d hoped to show the saints

The things of Other given me of late

Remains a work in progress on the banks

Within the city beautiful we make.

Resolved at once to answer Other’s call,

And sensing soon arrives my time to fall,

I set to work, arranging the décor,

To teach of Other in my red brick store.

101

Although I spoke of things late given me,

The Temple is of great antiquity.

Its principles were shown me in the grove

Where to the One Besmeared Upon I strove.

E’er since I have from Him received new birth,

I’ve learned that Temple things precede the earth.

Do not mistake the symbol for the truth,

Or else you miss partaking of the fruit.

102

The teaching of the Temple is a play,

For drama in religion is the way

To act, according to the ancient Greek,

Which acts and their significance we seek.

A play provides the opportunity

For patrons to achieve the likening

That grants to every man and woman leave

To see themselves as Adam and as Eve.

103

A patron of the Temple will begin

In need of cleansing from the blood and sin

Accumulated every passing day,

As we among our fellows make our way.

Our bodies quicken in a cleansing pour

That sealeth what a washing can restore.

As Saul, take up the garment of the slain,

As well like him, receive another name.

104

From thence commences the recitation,

That places patrons, ‘ere the world begins,

Within the presence and the hearing of

The Father of us all, enthroned above.

What’s learned is that the Father has a plan

To bring to pass th’eternal life of man.

‘Twas then we all agreed to mortal birth

And oversaw the making of the earth.

105

To see the earth created every time

The patron comes, suggests th’eternal rhyme

Of deity whose works shall never cease;

Unnumbered worlds to fill th’immensity

Of space and time, as well as to remind

That central is the place of humankind;

For crowning the creation of the earth

In us the godly image has new birth.

106

The Father has at center of His plan,

To bring to pass th’eternal life of man,

A Savior Who will save us from the sin

To which we are exposed by falling in

Environments that by necessity

Allow us acts of authenticity.

For only with two options given us

Can we receive the tokens of His trust.

107

To enter fully into heaven’s rest

Requires a Temple patron fully dressed

In robes of righteousness that represent

Th’authority of Him the Father sent.

The first two turns of keys that we receive

Invoke the hands of angels minist’ring;

To bear the names of fellow servants up

And save them in the name of Messiah.

108

The greater of the two authorities,

That Temple patrons take in hand as keys,

Is operated in an ordinance

That manifests the pow’r of godliness.

In this is knowledge of the mysteries

Performed by Him Who by Isaiah seen

Hath graven us upon His palms in grace

And fastened us by nail in His sure place.

109

The covenants we make along His path

Are five and teach us what the Father hath

Required of all His children entering

To dwell with Him for all eternity.

Obedience and sacrifice are well

And place the patron under His good spell

That chastens, consecrating everyone

Unto our God Who is the Twofold One.

110

Before they meet the Father through the Son

I taught them how to stand and pray as one:

“O hear, O hear, O hear, O Lord,” I prayed,

As when we raised a temple to His name.

They’re moving, always making an ascent;

For such is living in the covenant.

The church will not remain where she is set,

Which is to say, in Latin, deseret.

111

At last, O prison guard, I say to you:

Yea verily, the Book of Mormon’s true.

And though I die because this thing I tell,

Let it be said by all, my fall was well.

Though Satan says there is no other way,

Yet I, as Eve, choose to know Other’s way;

Tis Other, yea, by Whom I am enticed

And Who is He? I witness He is Christ.

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J. Wayne Shaw is a husband, father, latin teacher and veteran.

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“I am not ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what ought to be told: that I am under the direction of messengers from Heaven, daily and nightly…”

Prologue

1

A time and times and half were dead and rose,

Since my advance with grief was ere beheld.

I fell into a wand’ring as befit

The bloom and fall from whence I had been drawn.

By maidens’ speech bewrayed and thrice a’crowed

Belief took hold of me, one night usurped,

And treasure in the womb of earth, for which

A spirit walked, was visioned to my mind.

2

With darksome air aglow beyond the noon

By far-seen vesture white as ought be sought,

The form and rich habiliments of one,

Whose countenance gave semblance to the sun,

Poised with an angel’s ease in middle air.

With signs and words and hands my guide took hold,

And spake to me of wherewith I could look,

And cause the word ensepulchered to rise.

3

T’was next I heard of messengers to come:

Of one in temple and of one without.

And men, as stems bear rods, by gods begot

To draw thereto of remnants long cast out.

Then One to come to whom all must give ear

Before the undestroyed will be cut off.

At last upon us all a pouring out:

To dream and speak of blood and fire and smoke.

4

At length the vision closes and I lay

And muse upon this single solemn scene.

T’would take me long to tell you all he spake,

How many times he came, and all I saw;

But should I tell the whole the telling would

Exceed the spreading cosmos I suppose.

I, going to the hill envisioned me,

Will show you how with ease it may be climbed.

ὁ ἄγγελος

5

I left behind the sylvan τέμενος

To search within a rise consider’ble.

Upon its occident a mindful tomb,

O’er covered by a thick and rounding stone,

Where was a Messenger from Mercy’s seat.

With fixed levant obtained for leavening

The Messenger and I with faces toward

Spread winged speech o’er top the word ‘ngraved.

6

“I come not of myself,” he recommenced,

“But sent by Heaven’s Lady as a guide.

Yea She who ‘ccompanies a fire unquenched,

Which flame ascending up She shadows o’er

To cleave thy glossal organ so to grasp

The Word which I Her Messenger would speak.”

No longer was I from the Word enveiled;

My tongue a molten thing seraphic’lly.

7

Condemned in consequence of temptation,

My lips unclean with guilty levity,

Now covered o’er and well-departed from,

He spake to me as I to thee would speak:

“’Gainst those who see and seeing do not know

Shalt thou transgress athwart necessity;

‘Midst these by whom to see and know is had,

There are no castings by but givings to.”

8

Desirous of instruction to receive,

And knowledge great and greater to possess,

And coveting to know the mysteries,

If one or many gods there be I knew;

How we may as they are become I sought.

“Thy name,” he said, “to have as well to speak,

Shall means become for man as god to be,

For godhood is to know he will increase.”

9

“By whose increase,” said I, “does knowing come?”

“’Tis one,” said he, “whose godly mingling ye

Will come to know when it is given thee.

‘Ere then see thou wherewith to know begins.

About the soul’s divinity observe:

That ev’ry human soul shall ever last

As ev’ry thing first moving’s ever last;

To rest from motion is from life to rest.

10

To generate or be destroyed entire

Is not to motion givèn or to time.

Intelligence, unmade and increate,

And independently ensphered as man,

Is one of two composing all there is;

Thus all is things to act and acted on.

A body solely moved by force without

Perforce remains a body without soul.”

11

And I, “As God Himself does self-exist—

You say that this accounts for man as well.

The human mind is coequal with God’s?

Th’ intelligence of spirit’s immortal,

It lacks beginning, thus it hath no end?

If God ne’er had the pow’r a mind to make,

No more than He His mind did self-create,

Then spirits uncreated may enlarge?”

12

Then to my questioning he gave response:

“That gods there are to thee was manifest;

So keep thou in thy speech from absolutes.

Most think creation’s history commenced

With God ‘in the beginning’ to create

But when בׇרׇא ’tis rightly rendered thus:

‘The head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods.’”

To me still indifferent he luminates:

13

“The great majorities don’t comprehend

The is or was or will of the divine.

For one to comprehend the character

Of God means comprehension of the self.

And so thy self must go and Other come

To give thee sight of self as Other hath.

In truth, to know thy self as Other doth

Is no more than all gods have done ‘ere thee.”

14

With this I saw that man’s intelligence,

His spirit, mind, his everlasting self,

Like God, and with Him too, has always been.

And so to know the self from Other’s view

Is looking on a god in embryo.

Hence man like God is most divine and prized,

And thus we see that comprehending God

Means comprehending self, to think of thought.

15

Material is thinking self-begot

And thought to things thought on identical,

For thought thinks in concert with things thought on.

Insep’rable’s material from mind,

And these the two composing all there is,

For all is things to act and acted on.

And ‘tis the possible, which is desire,

That moves the actors on the acted on.

16

So understood, the Messenger conveyed:

“As said by them of old on continents

Three hundred four and forty days apart,

That faith means hoping after the unseen,

By means of ἐλπίς πίστις leads to sight.

The former is the latter’s self expressed

And represents the movement of the will

Unto th’unseen until arrived upon.”

17

To this I gave response, or rather tried:

“So faith is will and hope is will en route,

Which moves one toward a thing at first unseen

But, sight obtained, at last that thing is known?

Still, how can mind eternal, as you say,

Arrive upon a thing eternal too?

T’arrive is ending that which once began,

A thing eternity can’t understand.”

18

Then he, as if from house-top claiming forth:

“Th’immortal soul in worlds unseen hath dwelt,

‘Midst all souls, glory, and the Twofold One.

Be not amazed that things eternal meet;

When happens this to men ‘tis memory.

Intelligence cleaveth unto itself,

Thus is the light which lightens in thine eyes

The very same that quickens from without.”

19

So that I might regain to know aright,

I asked and heard of wither I should look:

“Learn thou from holy men ye know not of,

Yea men and women wise in things divine.

Unfust thyself, thou godlike ratio,

And comprehend beyond eat, drink, and sleep.

There is a discourse large and godly giv’n

And ‘tis humanitas to exercise.”

20

For such is human life, I understood,

An exercise humane, a dialogue.

O measure, weigh, and circumscribe the world,

Embrace all truth revealed and unrevealed.

A grand and fundamental principle

Is to receive the truth where’er its whence.

Believe and claim all good, for it is thine.

As with ten tongues and brazen lungs he spake:

21

“Some things expedient to understand:

Of things in heav’n and earth and under earth;

What has, is, and will shortly come to pass;

Of nations, wars, and of perplexities;

Of countries and of kingdoms must thou know.

As faith is will and is not had by all,

Seek ye, which is to choose, the choicest books,

For learning is to choose and nothing else.”

22

“With all good books and languages and tongues

Acquaint thyself to study and to learn,

Obtain to know of hist’ry, countries, and

Of kingdoms and the laws of gods and man.

Yea, seek ye out from books the best to learn,

Of Gilgamesh in whom the greater love,

That man can have, a friend for friend, subsists;

Then Beowulf who warred for kith and kin.”

23

“Read Plato for the youth of Christendom,

And Aristotle for its Middle Age.

See thou observe the Attic tragedies,

To purge thyself of fear through suffering.

Love these and bear them on as Cicero,

And stand athwart as nations come and go.

Make Seneca the tutor of thy youth,

And rule thyself as an Aurelius.”

24

“The mighty Homer, blind for all to see,

Still prophesies beyond philosophy.

Let Vergil by his genius and his art,

Crown you at Dante’s heavenly rampart.

And if you would yourself in others see,

Read Shakespeare’s most humane simplicity.

May Milton’s light, though dark, illuminate,

The goings, in and out, at heaven’s gate.”

25

“At last, I graft this branch to thy calling:

Take prophets and their laws and histories,

And translate them correctly as can be.”

Upon this last, I asked the Messenger,

How ought I understand those passages,

The learnéd understand so differently.

Said he to me, “The learnéd deconstruct;

An Other’s mind is thine and shall instruct.”

26

“If Other’s mind is mine,” I said to him,

“No thought is left to me save it’s to ask.”

The Messenger unsheathed a sharp rebuke,

That made my words to burn within my throat.

“Tis not,” said he, “made thine to feed thy lust,

But only after all that can be done,

Shall it be thine to raise up righteously,

What Justice of Himself could raise from stones.”

27

I asked him how and he explained to me:

“Before ye can declare ye must obtain,

The word of Justice dressed as when it came.

For language is the garment of His light,

And gives to know by hand and ear and sight.”

“What speech enrobes His light?” I next inquired.

“Whichever meets the moment’s wear and wend,

As He gives understanding unto men.”

28

So much I heard and still the Messenger:

“Though knowledge comes to where and when ye stand,

Think not the Light subject to thy command.

Admonished and by Justice nurtured, ye

Shall have wherewith that ye may look and see.

‘Tis known to Justice all that ye shall write,

So bend thy neck, His means shall give thee Light.”

So called I rose, went down, took up, and read.

Disallusioning

29

In time, one year precisely, I returned,

And clomb the hill to find the Messenger.

I told him of the tongues I had acquired,

The literatures in their originals.

The Messenger requested that I show,

A token of the grasp that I had claimed;

I gave the names of poets next to mine,

To weld a link of some or other kind.

30

As I from o’er the Word ensepulchered,

Entreated with eucholic litany,

There came as though a god from out the earth,

A man emmantled poet sovereign.

He sang as with a voice of canon-fire;

The measure of his sword, six feet, averse

To my approach; I sought the Messenger,

And asked by whose discord we’re brought to fight?

31

Then came the Messenger whose conduit

Had touched the earth from skywardly descent,

Who, sent per Mercy’s lightening embrace,

Unseen did seize the swordsman from behind.

With eyes unloosed the Messenger gave forth:

“And would ye strike another with a sword,

Though he be over thee set by thy Lord?”

Which calmed the mantled man to hear me ask:

32

“How art thou come without an offering,

To whet thy dusty tongue to ‘grave a word?”

Said he, “What off’ring’s that?” And I replied,

“Of old ye told of milk and honey mixed,

With wine and water poured into the ground,

By blood and barley white and then to red;

For such ye said the dead would quick apprise.”

To me the mantled man responding spake:

33

“You heard what I have said in ancient time,

Which was until an Other said to me,

That land for man was made, not man for land;

Whence honey’d milk should flow and not whither;

Where wine from water comes and that unmixed;

Where all that’s white was made to pass through red,

And nothing’s made to rise quick as the dead.”

And saying this, he went beyond my sight.

34

Then mark the place or else ignore the night-

Usurping-knight who shook a broken piece,

Of lance five feet in length and somewhat blank.

His stalk he weighed—although by heaven charged,

To speak, not vie with force in arms nor way—

Which, if not for th’ angelic Messenger,

Defending me with grace administered,

Had been a partisan and not withstood.

35

With ghost in hand the Messenger declined

To speak beyond a brief and thunderous line:

“And will ye smite another with a rod?”

Which gave the earth to shake and trembled him,

Who first had offered threat but now would speak.

What was this thing that came apparently?

A ghost who loved the globe and made his son,

The dwelling-place for love to sleep and die.

36

“Why art thou come,” I prayed he tell, “and how,

Cam’st thou to write what thou hast left to us?”

He said, “What left I you?” And I replied,

“The articles you played were thirty-nine,

Wherein you signified intent to roam,

From glen to isle and every pillared hall,

To bring reform to canon o’er indulged,

By mystery with miracle o’erlaid.”

37

“Ye see,” said he, “too much protest in me,

Which doth not say that I am wont to roam;

The canon’s such as not to be reformed,

But opened and restored to Other’s use,

As swords and spears like this to plough and hook,

For thorns I once imagined in the way,

‘Til Other showed the way is crowned with thorns.”

‘Twas at this stage the knight with stalk awayed.

38

Recovering, I faced the Messenger,

Whose steady hand and eye a-studying,

Held fast to cut or pluck and cast from me,

Whatever I should say that was a fence,

Between the truth and me and not avail,

Himself of rest until he ask, “What’s that,

Or rather whom did knocking bring to ask?”

I matched his grip on me to give the names.

39

Which hearing he spake not but did assign,

By motions that I come and see the place,

Where lay the word beneath the stone we rolled,

And sat upon to stoop and look within.

Out shined a light too heavy for the dark,

That lit me as it came into the world.

My hands obscured the lesser light of night,

Mine eyes unveiled a stick of golden leaf.

40

The Messenger forbade me take it out,

“Instead,” he said, “reach in to turn a leaf,

And read from those not bundled as a sheaf.”

Thither I reach a finger to behold;

And thither reached, my hand did thrust aside,

A sword and armor plate, what spectacles,

For leaflets of a palm wherein were graved

The characters that whisper from the dust.

41

Believe you me although ye shall not see—

Had I not seen I would not have believed—

And blesséd be when all ye shall not see,

From sleep where buried has for you a rose.

Inside was mounted to exceed the height,

Of every other instrument within,

The great שֶׁלֶם, the stick of golden leaf,

Which gave a white, clear, and transparent light.

42

The light in the beginning spelt a word,

Which spell I, looking, saw that it was good;

That is to say, within ‘twas all of good,

A fullness of a goodly parentage:

For Justice with His sword did fall upon,

The bowels of Mercy over all the earth,

And therefrom sprung a fruitful bough wherefrom,

Hath grown the golden branch inwalled below.

43

What manner of a manuscript was this?

A word was borne that winded me to see,

It bid me come forth, watch, and so I lean,

And looking past the mark, begin to sink;

I cried, was caught, and centered on the word,

I thanked the Messenger for saving me;

He said, “Not I, an Other heard thy shout,

And drew thee out above thy waves of doubt.”

44

Mine eyes were holden that I should not know,

Although my heart did burn as I looked on,

For there had thoughts arose that I had seen,

And handled these before. The Messenger,

Supposing me affrighted at the sight,

To offer me a peace that’s meet for food,

Did ask, “Why are ye troubled in your heart?

Or why for wond’ring make thy joy depart?”

45

The Messenger continued, “What ye see,

Is shown to thee because thou hast believed;

The spirit of the body ye behold,

Has animated every story told;

And thus, the similarities ye see,

‘Tween this and every story that ye read,

Betoken neither borrowing nor theft,

But show the Hand by which they’re manifest.

46

Although ye may have read in other place,

‘Twas all the truer said by Other’s grace,

Of trav’lers and from whence they can’t return,

A dread whose bourn the puzzled Will hath learned:

The undiscovered country’s not the grave,

That cold and silent place where firstborn lay,

The limbs of parents gone the earthen way;

It is the heart not for an Other saved.

47

As well when others write of sacrifice,

A thing acquired alone at Other’s price;

That it is better one than millions grieve,

When empire hath transgressed the bounds conceived,

‘Tis not the loss of trust in power conferred,

As dry but laureled valley hath averred,

But nations dwindling for their unbelief,

Must perish as they lack Other’s relief.

48

If one or many sang in other time,

Of heroes yet an Other’s more sublime;

The former told of gods who easily,

Undid all bonds to make their hero free.

The latter giveth not before the cry,

That indicates a faith that he may try.

Do not expect an answer ‘til ye pray,

According to thy faith, ‘tis Other’s way.

49

Another may have writ of devilry,

But Other giveth eyes wherewith to see;

‘Tis true that fiends delight in pomp and gold,

Obscuring things revealed from times of old.

Yet blind’s the man who bids a lady write,

To justify th’ accuser damned aright,

While protesting against an ancient sea,

Whose rock, for all the sand, is Other’s caye.

50

To damn the ignorant but otherwise,

Believing’s ignorant of Other’s rise,

That started from below what can be known,

And comprehends more than here can be shown.

To whom it’s not afforded to repent,

For place or age—whate’er th’ impediment—

A space is made to purge away the dross,

To wash, anoint, and clothe at Other’s cost.

51

And lest ye think another first played out,

What Other hath decreed shall come about,

It is for thee to understand whereby,

There’s life in thee, in earth, in sea, in sky.

Although a chorus pray it of the gods,

That they may ever struggle ‘gainst the odds,

‘Tis not for hubris that it must needs be,

But love that Other hath opposed to thee.”

52

And so, the Messenger let me behold,

How far the greatest literature’s inspired;

That all that’s written hath to some degree,

The light of Other and the coloring,

Of where and when it lit upon the man,

Or woman who gave body to a word.

And yet for all he gave to me to know,

There yet remained a questioning in me:

53

“But still, O Messenger,” I said to him,

When looking on the branch ye show to me,

I find, or else it seems to be, the words,

Of prophets and apostles who were born,

In lands and centuries sufficiently,

Removed from when and where this testament,

Was planted.” And the Messenger to me:

“I was about t’explain this thing to thee.”

54

“All that leads one unto the Twofold One,

Is by the Twofold One thought and begun—

All architects and authors, scientists,

The farmers, hunters, and ev’ry artist,

Who took a thing or place unorganized,

And thereto gave dimension realized—

The inspiration given him or her,

Was poured from heav’nly fountain to the earth.”

55

‘Twas thus affirmed: all good is from above;

Which truth the Messenger next qualified:

“Although what’s light is all of heav’nly stock,

Not all that’s light hath heat to burn in rock;

A writing may impress with heav’nly weight,

Yet lack the strength to press in metal plate.

It is the channel whereby light will flow

That its authority or naught will show.

56

“Should there be need for pow’r to organize,

Then it shall come as this—before thine eyes;

If all that’s needful be to beautify

Its coming is diffuse and over time.

For scripture comes through channels set apart,

While other writing’s tributary art;

Both flow from heav’nly fount t’illuminate,

Though art is true, yet scripture’s consecrate.

57

“Yet still,” I interjected to assert,

“Both writings are a draught poured from above,

No different after all than rain and mist:

Both water nonetheless for how they’re sent.”

The Messenger replied that Holy Writ,

Is more than literary art, for it,

Fills readers such that they will never thirst,

The rest, far from relief, bemoans the curse.

58

And thus it was I learned that given me,

Was light to see by Other’s gift and power,

Which gift must not for all its pow’r deter,

Me from determination to pursue,

A knowledge of all languages and tongues,

And make my object mastery of them

To magnify the calling whereunto,

I had been called; the mission commissioned.

59

I hence betook myself from out the grasp,

The Messenger had lain to stabilize,

Me ‘gainst the fall which Other had foreseen,

To leave with me wherewith I might recall,

That I had seen the fruit shine of a tree,

Whose bough hath reached as if from over sea.

I kept these things and pondered them within,

My heart only, for there they’d piercéd me.

Reconciliation

60

A year full passed, and I had filled the time,

Discerning of the fragments that remain,

In books of light that shining still declare,

The glory and the handywork that shew,

In writings what degree the author knew,

Of truth that flows from fountains heavenly,

And what degree ‘tis local coloring.

I found the Messenger awaiting me.

61

He firstly sought to know what I did not,

As in, he asked if I had understood,

The word within the stone ensepulchered,

And its relationship with other words.

I asked, “Shall it be made as literature,

To come forth by one unacquainted as,

I am with men and things to light the world?”

The Messenger announcing said to me:

62

“By Other favored high: praise be to thee;

And blesséd be ‘mid men and royalty.”

But when he saw me troubling at his word,

He overspake my inner dialogue:

Unfear thyself, ‘tis Justice favors thee,

To bear the word in Mercy you conceive,

A word that shall be great and most correct,

To reign, within the house of Justice set.”

63

“As Mercy once,” the Messenger recalled,

So Mercy shall again upon thee fall,

And overshadow thee to Justice’ end,

That they, through thee, a holy thing shall send,

Convincing Jew and Gentile looking on,

That Other is the One Besmeared Upon.”

With Justice nothing is impossible:

According to his word was this handmade.

64

“Through thee,” said he, “a mortal though thou be,

Shall come from out this stony womb the seed,

By Justice planted in His great Mercy,

That’s grown of thee, a fruitful bough sore grieved.”

At this I prayed him halt and to explain,

What grievousness awaits, to which he spake:

“Thy branches shall increase o’er every wall:

Thou, shot and hated, to a well shall fall.”

65

Aggrieved at this, I sought to understand,

Wherefore increase is ‘ccompanied of pain.

“’Tis there,” he said, “in thy desire to know;

Which thing shall make thy sorrow likewise grow.

Perhaps, ye wonder, will it ever cease;

Thy name in Hebrew means ‘he will increase,’

Which means though thou be company to pain,

Justice shall consecrate it to thy gain.”

66

I asked the Messenger how godly this,

To weep the mind’s increase, and he revealed:

“’Tis godliest; thus do the Twofold One,

When they behold what man to man hath done.

For knowing all, as they, means not alone,

Knowing the good, but evil ‘jacent grown.

This world will not endure a godly man,

Who mingles with the gods and knows their plan.”

67

“What is the plan that calls for me to die,

For traitors to the signs of my distress?”

“Such is the fate,” said he, “of all who would,

Follow the One Besmeared Upon for good;

All such as do shall come to know the loss,

Upon every attempt to bear across.”

“How is it done?” is what I asked him next,

‘Pon which he spake to me the following:

68

“To bear across; ‘tis what is done for thee,

That can’t be done except through the Mercy,

Of Justice Who raised up for thee a bridge,

That ye might find the way in thy language.

Ye hath not chosen this, it’s chosen you,

And so ordained that you should bring forth fruit

A wonder and a work so marvelous

To make as one the Twofold One with us.”

69

“But how,” I asked the Messenger, “shall I,

Translate so as to make so many one?

For is it not that languages are worlds,

And each translation yet another globe,

Rolled forth, still further from th’ original?”

The Messenger explaining thus replied:

“Unprofitable servant though thou be,

These words shall come by breath that’s lent to thee.”

70

“A new creation, this?” said he, “not so.

It is a first that’s last as made things go;

But speaking to the essence of the thing,

It springs out whence the sons of morning sing.

Although you’ll see it borne from out this wood,

It’s long been brooded over and called good.”

I asked the Messenger how did he learn,

The nature of the holy thing below.

71

“’Twas I that rolled the stone we’ve since unrolled,

That covered o’er this holy thing of old;

‘Twas I that drove a spike to make the prints,

And marks that gave another Testament,

That all may take in hand and see inside,

The voice of one who from the dust hath cried,

To nations that I would not live to see,

That One Besmeared Upon hath shown to me.”

72

“I would,” said he to me, “recount to thee,

How it had come to pass that anciently,

I saw the wreck and fall of all my kin,

Myself alone to write the telling in,

A record that will never dim with age,

But heal a broken family to assuage,

Contention by th’ accuser planted deep,

That brothers fight and not their brothers keep.”

73

And so it came to pass the Messenger,

Withdrew about a score of centuries,

Which made as plain as day the flight of time,

Gone by since when his father anciently,

Made new to him an era since bygone,

Of when and how their ancestors arrived,

And left descendants here to wend and now,

These are the words he did recount to me:

Fraternal Side

74

“My father, when a boy ten years of age,

And learnéd somewhat, met a bitter sage,

Perceiving that the boy’s sobriety,

And quickness to observe made plain that he,

Could trust the child when fourteen years had passed,

To journey to the hill where lay amassed,

The records of our people from the time,

When Other by constraint hallowed a crime.

75

My father’s name was of a place wherein,

A people having fled renounced their sin;

The place, a borderland and beastly wild,

Enclosed a spring of water undefiled.

A fitting name perhaps, because the man,

Had dealt and throve in war as few men can.

And yet within his heart a hope enclosed,

That bordered love for people in their throes.

76

At his eleventh year my father saw,

The land with men engorged and citied raw.

From north to south his father carried him,

Perchance t’escape a war at water’s rim;

His party was agathering for war,

To settle—or prolong—the ancient score.

Despite the peace, iniquity increased:

Faith in the Twofold One had all but ceased.

77

When fifteen years of age the sober lad,

Did know by taste what goodness Other had;

Endeavoring to preach among his own,

Other forbade as they had plainly shown,

A hardness in their hearts and willfully,

Had wrought th’accuser’s craft and sorcery.

The land was cursed, and all its treasure hid,

As Other with His gifts and Spirit did.

78

As war recurred, my father, yet sixteen,

Attained a post by rank and height o’erseen,

To lead his party’s army ‘gainst a foe,

Descended like as we but long ago,

Rebelled against the father of us all,

Whose younger son o’er them received a call,

To bring the family across the sea,

Away from danger to prosperity.

79

In three years’ time my father had achieved,

A victory against our foe that grieved,

Our people just as if the day were lost,

Because all their possessions were the cost.

At their lament my father did rejoice,

Hoping that Other’s goodness was their choice.

How vain his hope for their lament was in

That Other would not grant them joy in sin.

80

Their day of grace, my father saw, had passed;

They cursed the Twofold One and sought as fast,

To die as possible until they lay,

As dung and fourteen years had passed away.

In five more years our people did commence,

To flee the land; our foe never relents.

My father went to where the bitter sage,

Commanded him to go when come of age.

81

Within a hill the bitter sage had lain,

A record of great worth but not for gain;

There’s none can bring it forth except to him,

To whom the Twofold One hath shone their whim.

The record was engraved on golden plate,

By ancestors and are of ancient date.

My father read that he might understand,

The promise Other placed upon this land.

82

Upon the plates my father did forbear,

To give as full account as he was ‘ware;

The wickedness, abominations, and,

The scenic wo along the way of man.

As two years came and went our enemy

Did hunt and drive us on ‘til northerly,

We found ourselves and fought for hearth and kin,

But lacking Other’s spirit, took to sin.

83

Upon four years of war and strategy.

There was a truce between our enemy,

And us whereby each side had narrow passed,

In corridors of land long since amassed.

With ten years’ peace my father ‘gan to search,

The records of our people and their church.

He learned the whence and whither of our kin,

And told me of their cycling pride and sin.

84

The parents of our warring polities,

Were not born here but far across the seas.

The father was a visionary man,

Whose jaw was swung to speak by Other’s hand.

The mother though a woman of belief;

Constrained herself by sight and all its grief.

To these were born four sons who quick divide:

The older two against the younger side.

85

The younger sons did as their father did:

Desire to know where Twofold One was hid.

The older two felt as their mother felt:

Remain with precious things where they’d long dwelt.

It came to pass the father in his dreams,

Received the voice of Other who redeems,

Commanding him with wife and kin depart,

That they a nation overseas may start.

86

For wilderness and roaming they exchange,

The land inheritance in city range.

‘Ere long the father dreamt that Other spake,

Commanding his four sons a journey make,

Again into the city they had left,

And seek the record by the Jews impressed,

On orichalcum plates so to contain,

The law and prophets and their bloody strain.

87

The brazen record ‘longed to hoary man,

Who kept it guarded by a hundred hand.

The record—said the father ‘ere they went—

Would name the tokens and the covenant,

That he’d received from Twofold One before,

He left, by which Other would him restore,

To all we’d left behind in paradise,

Which thing will come to pass by sacrifice.

88

Our first attempt to gain the record failed;

The oldest of the sons had not prevailed.

The youngest next desired to consecrate,

What wealth their father left to buy the plates;

When this did not succeed the oldest took,

A rod and smote the youngest, “For the book,”

Said he, “was lost” and harder words until,

A Messenger appeared and made him still.

89

And to the younger next the angel spake,

Of all the obligations he must take;

To rule as king and teacher over all,

Though being undesirous of this call.

The oldest shall rebel and act a scourge,

That to remembrance of the way will urge.

The angel next began with subtilty,

And with the younger spake beguilingly.

90

“And what is that?” said he, “Put forth thy hand,

And take the life of fallen hoary man.”

To this replied the youngest he could not;

To do’s against what Twofold One hath wrought.

“’Tis not,” replied the angel, “and did I,

Say aught of Twofold One? I would ye try,

To comprehend the sword of hoary man,

And see thereby how Twofold One began.”

91

The youngest did partake and with the sword,

Behead the man and steal his clothes and hoard.

At this the youngest’s eye were open wide:

For Other, by his hand, blessed homicide.

But lest we think the youngest owed a grief,

To spare the man meant death by unbelief.

And thus the youngest kept the full command,

That to his father came by Other’s hand.

92

The brothers four next bore the record back,

To see their father bear his wife’s attack.

For she had mourned her sons as perishing,

Because they had escaped her sight and string.

The father took the record and commenced,

To search the prophecies and his descent.

He saw ‘ere Adam left the guarded life,

T’ensure a fruitful yield he took a wife.

93

The brothers were commanded to return,

And take them wives and thence begin to learn,

That everything in Other is replete,

With something by its opposite complete.

Thereby alone is Other made the sum,

By Whom alone to Twofold One we come.

So took they wives at biblical behest,

Whereby the youngest was exceeding blessed.

94

With promise as contained in Holy Writ,

Secured, the father dreamt his children split.

He saw in dark and dreary waste a tree,

With fruit more white than anyone can see.

The father doth by voice and hand entreat,

His family to come and with him eat.

The younger with their mother do partake;

The older both refuse the sign he makes.

95

The youngest by desire to know and see,

Sat pondering upon his father’s tree.

When taken up in spirit to a height,

He saw and knew wherefore the tree was white.

‘Twas virginal, untouched by man and sin:

The love of Twofold One it bore within.

The youngest had beheld the condescent,

Of Other as a living water sent.

96

The youngest looking further did behold,

A book of Other’s covenants of old.

The book was like unto the record that,

The youngest had through blood to himself gat.

But smaller was the book and smaller still,

It would be made by wickedness until,

A fruitful bough as if from over sea,

Arise from stone unrolled per prophecy.

97

‘Pon which the vision closed; the youngest stood,

And set himself to fashion nails for wood,

And build a vessel by the Spirit blown,

To find the place made sure by vision shown.

At this the oldest brother’s anger stirred,

Afraid to be subject to younger’s word.

The youngest from the oldest thus depart;

The oldest thence pursued a darker art.

98

So spake my father of our ancient kin,

And how there came the days that we were in.

He strove to save our people but in vain;

They cursed themselves in swearing to their slain.

My father, being old, would see the last,

Engagement of our people come to pass;

We stand upon the hill where he did hew,

A tomb wherefrom his word will rise to you.

99

And thus it was my father had been killed;

His record left to me was yet unfilled.

I gave account of people from the tower,

And letters from my father on the power,

Of Other by faith, hope, and charity,

As well the horrors of iniquity.

I wandered, died, to sleep ‘til you appear;

I am the same who laid the record here.

100

Those were the words he did recount to me;

And still the Messenger could not relate,

A hundredth part of what was done among,

So many people o’er a thousand years,

Nor could the world contain what should be writ.

But here is writ that everyone might know,

That Other is the One Besmeared Upon,

And seeing this might live the life He lives.

His Fourth

101

A year elapsed—the final year—before,

I would be given leave to take away,

The written body from its guarded tomb,

And give it flesh as was espoused to me.

The first day of the lunar year I went,

When it was dark, unto the sepulchre;

When come I found the stone was rolled away,

And looking in found not the record there.

102

Perplexed and turning thereabout I saw,

The Messenger was sitting on the right.

I fell as if the earth beneath me shook;

His countenance was lightened as he spoke:

“Why look ye for the dead where there’s new birth?

The word’s arose to hiss forth to the earth.”

Against the fear and thoughts within my heart,

Himself stood up with plates and peace to me.

103

The Messenger who anciently had wound,

And salved the plates delivered them to me.

Before we left him there he strictly charged,

Against neglect or carelessness or else,

From every blessing I should be cut off,

But if endeavoring to keep them safe—

Responsibly preserved until he call—

Protection I won’t see will leave me blessed.

104

I soon found out the reason of his charge;

For quick exertions the most strenuous,

And every stratagem one might invent,

Were used to get the plates away from me.

As soon as I descended from the hill,

To bring before the lady most elect,

The golden branch from angel hands received,

Th’Accuser came and set to tempting me.

105

The fallen one, unseen, but ne’ertheless,

Excited a great deal of prejudice,

And was the cause of persecution great,

That, strange, affixed to me of scanty fate.

For who was I to draw so great a crowd,

Reviling me? Of what ought I be proud?

In time I learned my destiny to be,

Against th’Accuser’s rule from infancy.

106

In consequence of the indigency,

The ever-plagued my father’s family,

The Tempter found me when a hungering,

When daily labor failed at obtaining,

The daily bread that Other bade us pray,

To keep the fast of poverty at bay.

He reasoned if the stone by which I read,

Could bring me words then surely why not bread?

107

I answered that the light wherewith it shines,

Is like unto the stones of ancient times,

When molten of a rock ‘til white and clear,

And offered by a man struck down in fear,

Because he saw in spirit Other’s frame,

Was like unto his own and heard the name,

Whereby all may with Other be as one,

I know therefore I am like Him a son.

108

Once more th’Accuser took up words with me,

To puff me up so high as if to see,

Myself as sitting up and looking down,

With pinnacle and temples under crown.

He said to me that if a son thou art,

Then cast thyself, like Him, below thy part;

That angels never would leave me alone,

Or else I dash my head against my stone.

109

I answered him again that by the fall,

Our nature’s evil such that we must call,

To Other for whate’er we may desire,

And He can do whate’er He will to fire,

The light in us that it may shine in dark,

And speak with us like angels o’er the ark.

Our faith we may exceed and nothing doubt,

And see within the veil, no longer out.

110

At last the Tempter looked within my soul,

And saw my weakness and discerned the toll,

On me exacted as I’m caught between,

My foibles and the height of my calling.

He said that prophets are infallible,

That scripture’s only ever literal;

All these things he will give me at a whim,

If only I fall down and worship him.

An Other

111

I answered that what imperfections he,

When looking at this risen word may see,

Are there to succor our infirmity;

They be the faults of man if faults there be.

It is of every word the most correct—

And quickened for the sake of the elect—

Restoring things most plain and precious lost,

To testify an Other bore across.

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J. Wayne Shaw is a husband, father, latin teacher and veteran.

Art by C.C.A. Christensen.

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Her song built a prayer
Shrine and verse
hidden behind
the high note
was hope
rising on the east side of sorrow
Heaven is indifferent
She sang below fog
on knees made of dirt
heart heavy as
forgotten stone
messy moss and bloomed daisies
from tangled dreams

God named her Faith
turned her whole sky pink with promise
and filled her with words
about a home she did not know

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K.A. Gardner is a woman, friend, mother, chaplain, screenwriter, essayist, and accidental poet. You can find her on Instagram at @k.a.gardner.

A sacrament cup
falls under the bench
and a little child
unfolds it.

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Theric Jepson is the current editor of Irreantum. His novel Just Julie’s Fine has some Greek letters but no Greek words and only for math reasons. thmazing.substack.com

Boys and girls, buzzing with energy, stutter at the line of cones.

Which marks the start of a two-mile race, the first of the season.

Tightly-laced shoes flatten the grass as children lean, diagonal, waiting for the gunshot.

Except my son. He stands up straight and talks with a friend. His shoes are caked in mud.

The gun cracks. Kids sprint. A mess of blue shirts, green, white shirts, yellow, hurling
themselves across the lawn. Elbows and knees, a churning whirl of triangles in motion.

Between the kids and my kid is a two-foot gap. Now three. Then four yards. Point five miles.

My son jogs, face upward. His eyes take in the leaves of oaks and wispy clouds of evening sky.
His red shirt bobs like a buoy in a lake.

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Mikayla "Mik" Johnson is the winner of the 2024 Utah Original Writing Competition Short Story Collection. Her work has been published in The Colorado Review, Door is a Jar, Segullah, and others. Find her on instagram @mikjohnsonwrites

Behold the babe on straw there lie
Within the manger of the beast.
Think of the death he'll one day die,
And how, just as the cattle feast
On fodder, not on squealing prey,
We too sustain our souls on fare
Which neither fights nor flees away,
Nor does it come like costly ware;
But without price or money spent,
All, even to the earth's far ends,
Derive a perfect nourishment
From what he, dying, thus expends.
The sustenance we thereby draw
Beyond life's bounds shall overbrim.
The beasts shall feed upon the straw,
Our souls shall feed alone on him.

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K.D. Taylor received his B.A. in English from Oregon State University. He enjoys power metal, fruit smoothies, and fantasy paintings (often simultaneously).

“Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men.” Ether 12:4

An anchor does not stop the wind, 
Does not cease the slap of the sail 
Or the wild rocking of the boat. 

When solid steel meets sea and sinks 
Plummeting down to the sand, 
The storm does not desist, but rages.

Angry fists beat wood and canvas, 
Fingers pry into weakest points 
The boat is now a battleground.

But beneath the surface, 
Below waves and wind, 
Flukes bite the sand, and
An anchor holds. 

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Phoebe Romney Cook is a curious seeker of truth and a busy mother of five. She runs, she reads, she cooks, she creates, she mothers, and when she can find a couple of quiet moments, she writes.

Once I tried to craft a whole essay
about my hair. The vitality of it. The need.
This was in the bad old days—
when I, a Mormon in love with agency, eked out
under the mummified McCarthyist thumb
of a Mormon totalitarian university—
and in a land across oceans, where
my friend with degrees in Arabic and
Russian literature had sent me to learn,
I stood in structured lines for bread of life
on Friday Sabbaths next to shorn men
who asked how I could possibly care
about something they didn’t.

There’s only this to know:
Earth-life is not biting down
on dust grit to trade chances at rainbows.
You cannot bridle another’s passions, Morning-Star—
all freedom is good freedom.

There’s only this to know:
my hair is how I lean in with a secret wink
and tell you I was the wind, this whole time
I was the warm free zest of springtime gusts.

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Thomas Sorensen adores the textures of a Roine Stolt guitar note, onion rosemary bread he didn't make himself, and speculating about sauropod internal cooling mechanisms. He loathes surveillance capitalism, leaving his family at the end of each visit, and fervorlessness. The most important event of his life was meeting his infant brother. His most dire fear is late-onset Capgras Syndrome in a loved one. Every night he savours a mug of some offbeat herbal tea blend, and a few minutes of guaranteed reading time. He is constantly baffled by the assumption that human selfishness is a given, “It's defeatable. It could be minor. We socialize each other further into it instead.” And, in his favourite future, he have raised and loved several children well enough to become the wallpaper in their hearts' safest chambers.

Wayfare magazine announces “Behold the Man!,” its first annual contest for poems about or related to Jesus of Nazareth. The inaugural judge is James Matthew Wilson, the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas.

TOPIC

We’re looking for a range of responses to Jesus from a variety of faiths and perspectives, religious or otherwise. Poems should engage this topic with freshness and insight, avoiding overly simplistic expressions of either praise or criticism of Jesus himself or Christian beliefs and practices.

Some examples of what we’re looking for include but are not limited to Gerard Manley Hopkins’s effusive encomium “The Windhover,” Mary Oliver’s heartbreaking identification with the sleeping apostles in ”Gethsemane,” James Wright’s haunting sonnet “Saint Judas,” Anne Sexton’s powerful wrestling with faith and disbelief in “With Mercy for the Greedy,” Stephen Dunn’s delightful irony in “At the Smithville Methodist Church,” and Joe Plicka’s moving taxonomy of Christian representation, “The Jesus.”

PRIZES

1st: $1000, 2nd: $500, 3rd: $100. The number of honorable mentions will be determined by the judge. All contest winners and honorable mentions will be published in Wayfare magazine.

SUBMISSION WINDOW AND JUDGING

Submissions are accepted February 1st through March 29th, 2026 (Palm Sunday). Winners will be notified at the end of May and recognized at the summer Wayfare Festival.

Semifinalists will be selected by Kevin Klein, D.A. Cooper, and Kathryn Knight Sonntag. The contest judge will select winners from among the semifinalists. Wayfare reserves the right not to award prizes.

GUIDELINES

• Poets may submit up to two poems. Each poem must be 50 lines or fewer, including epigraphs but excluding title and stanza breaks. Prose poems accepted: 300-word limit.

• All verse forms and free verse accepted. Poems must be in English but may contain some words in other languages.

• Format: Word or PDF document. 12 pt readable font (Times New Roman, Arial, Cambria, Calibri)

• Judging will be blind at all stages. Poets must remove any self-identifying information from their submissions.

• Family members and current students of the judge are ineligible to enter.

• Simultaneous submissions are allowed.

• Poems must be original, not translations of others’ work.

• Poems must not be AI-generated in part or whole.

• Poems must be unpublished in print, on the Internet, or in limited edition books as of the contest deadline.

SUBMISSION FORM

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“Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool . . .” (John 5:2).

Light tickles the tops
of water molecules whose
number and strength defy
the human mind, a liquid
quilt stitched by Mother God.
Yet the pool lies still, a peace-filled
elixir for broken bodies and spirits
camping at its edges, waiting not in awe
at water’s cohesion but in hope only
realized through loosening
bonds, an angel-touched stirring,
a divine troubling.
Do you want to be made well?
Jesus, straight to the point.
Wrong question, we plead.
The “how” plagues us.
If not doused in the deep then . . . ?
Bypass the water, proclaims the Jesus who
made the sea his footpath.
Stand up . . . walk.

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Kellie Brown is a violinist, music educator, and award-winning writer. Her words have appeared in Ekstasis, Foreshadow, and others. In addition to 35 years of music ministry, she serves as a UMC lay minister and is pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Theopoetics at Bethany Theological Seminary.

Art by James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903).

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At the level where all is discerned
by chemical and touch,

bacteria toil and fast in loam or clay.
Humble ascetics, not hoping

as homo sapiens hopes
exactly, but exuding still

a firm expectation
at times swelling beyond their membranes

that the heavens will open soon,
that a sack full of blessings

will lower from the sky. Bustling forth,
they are l…

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I

Five a.m., the moth shows up
	again: Black triangle. Guitar pick.
		Black fleck on the sill,

the arrow saying look, here
	it is, the window, black
		looking glass, see

your future, your past. Little
	oracle? Last time it pointed out
		the field of white flowers

on the ceiling, but I didn’t see them—
	just my daughter trying to flick it
		with the broom. Before that she said

I saw it—I don’t recall where now, I’d only been
	half listening. In the deluge
		of daily words, I thought

the moth biography is not need-to-know—
	but felt the pull of her telling—
		she wanted to narrate this little

impossibility. She is nearing twelve,
	opening to metaphor, to omens.
		Once, at the urgent care, one fluttered up

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                         Can these bones live? - Ezekiel 37:3

Sometimes I think my bones are made of words. 
Some ancient and forgotten, almost fossilized, 

others in their marrow dreaming new language 
not yet framed in book or speech—a "goblish“

soft and pliable, like a fanning tailbone of peacock 
feather for my walking skeleton of hickory sticks. 

My clavicle, for one, close to the heart feels heavy, 
“ful gēomorre,” long banished with the Old English 

and “full sad.” I consider the carpals daily as I wash
my hands, “bote for bale,” quick to open the palm, 

quick to soothe, a “remedy for evil.” Call the occipital 
“fiammante," a coinage of late Latin, a bone “on fire,” 

so to speak, igniting the spine with blue, yellow, 
indigo flame. 

		A resurrection should be easy 
enough to claim then, right? Even with one’s

nomenclature still evolving. Simply revive 
the old words, embrace the new, with nothing 

lost, not a jot, not a tittle, but the whole everlasting 
bone work burnished in the strange and motley,

a goblish forged to plumb the cosmos and live 
forever, and the first fragment to rise, vertu. 

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The prayerful one promised bread like seeds
feathering on dusts of wild Sin, where wisps
of lowly morning water held God’s glory
in their mist. Here, child, mother said, go find pearls
of honey before they melt beneath the candle sun
—bright till late when even comes, hot while whirls
of coveys run. Have you forgotten? God can grow
flocks of quail from …

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there He laid

in a manger
     where creatures fed;

He came
     to be consumed.

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Kyle Beshears is a pastor, theologian, and author whose work focuses on American religious history and Latter-day Saint studies. He serves as pastor of Mars Hill Church in Mobile, Alabama, has taught in academic and ministry settings, and writes on theology, interfaith engagement, and Mormonism. Kyle is the author of the forthcoming 40 Questions About Mormonism (Kregel, 2026).

Toward the end of the play Our Town, Emily, in tears after having been given a chance to relive some moments of a regular day in her life, turns to the Stage Manager and asks, “Does anyone ever realize life while they live—every, every minute?” The Stage Manager’s first answer is no, but then he reconsiders: “Saints and poets maybe . . . they do some.”

What do you think? Do poets actually live differently from other people? If so, how?

Poets are sometimes described as seers. I think that when people call poets seers, they are doing so because of some experience they’ve had with poetry as readers that makes them suspect that poets, in order to create the words that affect the readers so deeply, must be seeing (and maybe living) differently than other people do.

As for the line in Our Town, I’m not sure which comes first for Wilder. Is he asserting that engagement in the work of writing poetry leads to intense, attentive living, or that “poet” is a good title for someone who has managed to live this way? Technically, the definition of poet is simply “a person who writes poetry.” Of course, anyone can and probably should write poetry. But few would argue that Dr. Seuss’s poetry and Edgar A. Guest’s poetry and the “Footprints in the Sand” poem and Mary Oliver’s poetry and that of Wallace Stevens and Rae Armantrout all arise from the same kind of person, or from the same kind of attention.

I think that when Wilder postulates that poets—or any artists—might experience life more intently, he is referring only to those poets (and painters, and potters, and musicians) who have managed to create something that enables readers to feel their own experience more deeply. Perhaps also he is speaking from his own experience of creating art because he knows that in order for him to create art that moves others, he must engage in a certain kind of attentiveness.

What, then, is that attentiveness, and when in a writer’s process does it take place? Is it in the living, or in the work—or both?

There is a sort of cultural awe, sometimes, about this mysterious, god-struck poet-figure who sees more clearly and is more inspired than regular mortals (inspiration: being breathed into by God). That divine lightning strike is what calls the poet, and it is then her job to put her visions into words for the rest of us. Denise Levertov speaks of the poet as priest and the poem as a temple enabling communion for “those who need but can’t make their own poems.”1 A poet sees, and then fulfils her duty to relay. But I think that many poets would probably say that it is the work that produces the seeing in the poet as well as, later, in the reader. That is, the work that poets engage in because of a commitment to create requires—and therefore produces—greater attentiveness. So, yes, a poet may be “realizing life” more intensely, but this realization comes because of, and through, the work. For those who see this attentiveness as spiritual, the craft of poetry becomes a spiritual practice. In his book on poetry, The Art of Paying Attention, poet Donald Revell says that “attention is a piety and . . . the unaggressive articulation of attention in poems may be a form of prayer, an instance of worship, a forwarding of peace.”

The role of attentiveness plays a part in my own work in four ways:

1. I must be attentive to the world in order to find a subject for a poem and a way into the piece.

2. I must be attentive to the work in order to craft the poem.

3. I want my poem to demand attentiveness from my reader, and reward it.

4. I want my poem to make my reader more attentive to the subject of the poem specifically, and the world generally.

Each of these aspects of attentiveness can inform, mirror, or at least stand as a metaphor for spiritual practice.

1. I must be attentive to the world in order to find subjects and approaches for my work.

For one thing, because of my commitment to produce poetry, I have developed practices that have increased my ability to welcome and recognize triggering subjects (the subjects of future poems). For example, I make it a habit to write down ideas as soon as I get them, even if they come at 2:00 a.m. When you greet an idea with courtesy, welcoming it as an honored guest, more ideas come.

President Henry B. Eyring makes a similar claim about the spiritual practice of seeing the hand of God in our lives: If we write these things down, we will recognize more of them in our lives.

Another practice that increases my ability to recognize poetic subjects is a rigorous commitment to regular work that is independent of a feeling of inspiration. I give myself assignments: “I must produce a poem today,” and show up to work whether I feel inspired or not.

The assignment doesn’t make me more inspired throughout the day. In fact, I’ve found it a little unhealthy to maintain a constant purposeful watchfulness for subjects just because I know I’ll be writing a poem later. Like a monetized personal blogger knowing she must report on her day, the temptation is to watch myself living in a sort of self-consciousness that becomes a cheap substitute to the real attentiveness of full participation in the moment. Rather, I prefer my work to arise from attentive and unselfconscious living followed by later attentiveness in recollection at my desk. This is similar to Wordsworth’s concept of “emotion recollected in tranquility,” but I would assert that the recollection itself can bring up greater emotion than what I originally experienced because of my thoughtful attention to the situation in retrospect. Though the original situation may have brought up very little emotion, the act of committing to produce work creates the space for a lived moment to affect. My task at the desk, then, is to attend carefully to the subject. What is it really like? How does it look, or taste? What are metaphors for it, or what is it a metaphor for? What does it remind me of?

I believe this attending is a spiritual practice. By doing it, I am homing in on truth. I am maximizing experience. I am, because of my attentiveness to the experience in retrospect, having “life more abundantly” (John 10:10). Here, in retrospect, is where I feel most as if I am poetically “seeing.”

This aspect of creation deeply resembles my faith practice. My personal definition of faith is action because of a commitment—a decision, backed by action, to move forward, where the decision does not depend on anything from outside (such as whether I’m “feeling it” on a particular day or whether an angel has, or has not, visited me). When I write, I show faith by committing to an assignment even if I don’t feel inspired, moving my fingers on a keyboard hoping to catch the lightning if it comes. In my religious life, I have committed to faithful activity. Faith doesn’t require an emotion, nor does it depend on something I might receive from outside myself; it is simply a decision to move my feet. If and when God decides to appear to me—and He has, and He does—He finds me already in motion, attending.

2. I must be attentive to my work.

Once I’ve found my topic and my approach (which usually doesn’t happen until I’ve got lots of language already), I begin the work of forming language into a poem. Like pretty much anyone who works, I long for a sense of flow—a loss of self, a feeling of timelessness—but a lot of time, I am just trudging forward, doing the things I know how to do. This involves examining each line for possibilities, always pushing towards freshness, which could come in the form of a surprising image or metaphor, for example, or some play with sound.

I attend and attend, assessing, trying things out. I make lists of metaphors. I play with alternate phrasings for rhythm and sound. I collapse the lines into a paragraph and break them up again. In all of this work, I am striving to maximize the experience for the reader.

. . . which brings me to #3:

3. I want my poem to demand attentiveness from the reader.

People continue to debate the difference between poetry and prose, but one thing I think everyone can agree on is that when you simply want to communicate information to someone (what time the meeting will be held, for example, or why your brand of air conditioner is more cost-effective than another), you use prose. Poetry is for something else.

Poetry requires more interaction than prose. Through metaphor, symbolism, creative line breaks, musicality, etc., a poem invites the reader to participate in the experience. For example, consider this line from e. e. cummings:

“nobody not even the rain has such small hands”

When we encounter a line like this, our mind sparks. What? Rain doesn’t have hands. But I guess if it did, the hands would be very small. And yes, now that I think of it (sensory memory), rain can sometimes feel like very soft hands patting my skin tenderly . . .

Poems differ in the amount of participation they ask of a reader. Because I most enjoy poetry that is immediately accessible (that is, not highly demanding at first) but also rewarding when I attend more carefully through a second read, that’s the kind of poetry experience I strive to create. As I work at my craft, I attend to the way the words invite the reader’s attention, both on first entering the poem and then later with a re-read.

Perhaps we could say that the best poetry respects the reader’s free agency, because it has space in which the reader can enter the poem more deeply if she desires. Instead of pounding a message hard and directly as prose would, poetry values the reader’s active engagement so much that it risks misinterpretation rather than closing all gaps.

Similarly, I believe that God has deliberately allowed poetic gaps within the scriptures because he expects us to interact with the words. Jesus taught in parables, risking misinterpretation—perhaps even inviting multiple interpretations—saying that those with ears to hear would hear. Attending to and interacting with scriptural text is a spiritual practice.

4. Finally, I hope my poem will make the reader more attentive to the world.

I feel my poem is successful if a reader enjoys the experience it creates. But much better is if, after reading it, my reader turns to the world and sees it differently because of the experience. Maybe my poem about—say—living with a teenager could help a parent of a teenager see his or her own life differently. Moses cried out,“Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets” (Numbers 11:29). My institute teacher used to say that a prophet’s role is to create more prophets. Perhaps a poet’s role is to create more poets. Ideally, a poet escorts the reader to the mountain from which, after the holy experience, the reader returns to his life carrying not just his new way of seeing the subject of the poem, but also a new way of seeing in general. Perhaps a really good poem delivers its reader his or her own Urim and Thummim. In this way, poetry can play a role in the reader’s spiritual practice by increasing his attentiveness to his own experience.

Let me conclude by using a specific poem to provide an example of the four ways attentiveness comes to play in the experience of poetry. Here is my poem, “Purchased.”

First, I found the subject of the poem by being attentive to my own experience. I had assigned myself to write a poem. I looked through notes I had taken on my phone of potential poetry topics as they had occurred to me over past days. One note had been written on a day I had spoken in irritation to my kids. Frustrated that I still hadn’t conquered this tendency after years of trying, I had suddenly realized that I might never permanently fix this weakness in myself. Did that mean, then, that I wasn’t on the right path to God? What, then, did the Atonement actually mean? Now, as I sat at my desk, fingers moving, worrying the subject and pushing on it, I attended to the topic of human weakness and God’s grace. I imagined what God would say to me about it, and began to find language that might make a poem. You see how this work resembles prayer in a way. The work of finding words was also a conversation with God.

I knew I had found an entrance into the poem and a mode that I wanted to use when I felt that what I had collected to say might be of interest to someone else, that it might spark a new way of looking at daily repentance for my reader. Then I generated a lot of language, trying out different voices (God’s to me, mine to God). Finally, I began attending to the actual shape of the language on the page. I drafted in my usual longish lines, then looked for places that made interesting line breaks. I read aloud, attending to what the reader might experience while reading the poem.

I decided to try some unique spacing on the page, something I rarely do because such forms can seem overly-manipulative to me as a reader. I decided to risk that, though, because I wanted to mimic the feeling of prayer—the halting progress, the pausing for response, the searching for greater self honesty—and I used uneven, disruptive spacing to create that feeling.

I examined each line. Was I using enough imagery? Could other images be better? I looked at the sounds in each line. Would more attention to musicality add to or detract from the particular tone I wanted (here, familiar but also tenderly holy)? I examined every word. I added an epigraph to give the reader more context so that she can more quickly access the subject and context.

I felt I was done when the words, line breaks, etc. functioned together, as well as I could tell, to create an experience for the reader that would enable her to re-see the process of accepting and relying on the Savior’s atonement.

Now that you’ve joined me in this poem-temple that I created, what do you think? Did it work? I hope that attending to my poem makes you attend a little more to what the Atonement means to you. I hope that in this way I am helping you more attentively “realize life,” as Wilder claims, becoming a little more of a seer yourself.

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Darlene Young has published numerous essays as well as three poetry collections (most recently, Count Me In, Signature 2024). A recipient of the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters, she teaches writing at Brigham Young University. Her work has been noted in Best American Essays and nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She lives in South Jordan, Utah. Find more about her at darlene-young.com.

Art from Rain Series by Shelly Coleman.

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                “Do you have anything here to eat?”

                             Luke 24:41

Again, He wrestles with their disbelief.
They’d watched him crowned and heard his final cry.
To see his face and hear his voice—not grief
but joy so close to shouts of Crucify!
The fact of resurrection shines too bright
to certify itself.  For evidence
Jesus anchors triumph in appetite.
All breath ceases in quivering suspense:
A fish?  Was it a miracle’s encore?
Surely, some thought the fare would multiply.
But then He eats! And then for joy they roar.
What but a man could food so satisfy?
From Eden, for eating, we were cast out;
But He, eating, feeds them and consumes doubt.

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Dr. Phillip Aijian holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance drama and theology from the University of California, Irvine, and an M.A. in poetry from the University of Missouri. His poetry has been featured in journals such as ZYZZYVA, Heron Tree, Poor Yorick, Zócalo Public Square, and Christian Scholars Review. He is also a visual artist currently commissioned to craft liturgical clocks. He teaches in Southern California where he lives with his wife and children. You can find more of his work at www.phillipaijian.com