Pioneer Ascension

Cedar Fort, 1874

When the Storm God shut the eyes
of Lucy Bailey White, he carried her
spirit to the peak of Flat Top Mountain
to show her the work of his hands. 
She was not yet young again, but her knees 
and ankles were nimble now, free 
from the burden of flesh that ground
them down for over eighty years. 
She leaped from crag to crag, following
the Storm God as his long hair 
and electric cloak shed flakes of snow
across his path. When he stretched his arms 
wide as eternity, noting this stray cow
or that irrigation ditch, Lucy saw them all 
up close, as if she too carried a Divine Eye 
like a telescope around her neck. 
From that height, the people in town,
out for her wake, looked no taller
than stitches in a hemline. They stood 
by her coffin, heads bowed, glancing 
now and then at her toothless grin, 
sewn shut and all but lost behind her veil. 
Lucy wanted to laugh, but the Storm God 
waved his hand, and the coffin closed. 
Then he set a fiery coal upon her feet, 
and together they soared above the valley 
as every cloud from Lehi to Santaquin 
converged over the mountain and spat
ice crystals and cold rain on the mourners,
refreshing their cisterns and dry wells. 
And Lucy became light, her spirit one 
with the Storm God as they climbed
higher and higher above the tempest.

Scott Hales lives in Utah. He is the author of The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl (2016, 2017) and Hemingway in Paradise and Other Mormon Poems (2022). He likes to make art, visit old cemeteries, and run long distances.

Art by Augustus Tack.