It’s hard to imagine five thousand Saints in this place Where wind whips sloping hills and fallow fields. All that’s left are four temple cornerstones embedded In the middle of nowhere, like the opposite of tombs. Could this really have been Church headquarters For two years, like a missionary come and gone? If I said desolate, you wouldn’t think of the spot Where tithing was revealed or where Sidney Rigdon Delivered his famous Fourth of July oration. No, The Restoration clearly moved on from this place, Much farther west, unfurling across plains and Mountains to terrains and truths only prophets could Envision. Perhaps that’s a metaphor: what was once Far away is no longer distant. God works that way, Coaxing us beyond the boundaries of the known. We think globe, He thinks galaxy. His dreams are Grander than our dreams. Not the Midwest, Far West, or even West Coast, but worlds without number. Don’t be myopic, the four stones sing in silent harmony. Immortality is a prairie on a continent called Eternity.
Isaac James Richards is an award-winning poet, essayist, and scholar of rhetoric. He has also taught classes in the BYU English Department, Honors Program, and School of Communications.
Art by Mabel Pearl Frazer (1887-1982)