#saltlakecity
Mountains swell, knuckle, roll.
Foothills slope and slide.
Canyons fold, streams bend,
Salt marshes wrinkle and sink.
These pagan forms alone gave shape
To this valley before God’s people arrived.
Not until the Saints brought
Rectilinear rectitude
And wrote a grid into this arid soil
Did this place become the land of God.
My parallel brethren,
North Temple, First South,
We will meet in eternity.
And now do I sustain the men
Who bear the Logos
From the mountain to the desert,
Past Saint and Mason, Catholic and Jew
And, unbending, reveal
That the straight line is an act of God.
©David Adamson 2015
Sep 27, 2015
Sep 27, 2015 at 10:26 AM UTC
I
We played kick the can
Where the sidewalk cracked,
Ruptured by a cottonwood’s roots.
Then winds from the canyon came rushing
Through the leaves of the tall cottonwoods
(I believed that sound was the sound
Of time rushing away),
And sent us home.
I paused on the front porch.
From across the street a faint mist drifted,
Rainbird spray from Reservoir Park,
Chuff chuff chuff chuff
Chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff- chuff-chuff-chuff.
At the horizon beyond the park,
Jagged streaks of pink tapered into purplish dusk
Above the shrinking mirror of Great Salt Lake.
II
I entered the silent house
Where something strange was taking place.
Darkness billowed from the living room couch.
Ink oozed from unlit lamps.
Shadows deformed familiar shapes:
Chairs, an end table, a portrait, the piano,
A piece of driftwood from the Dead Sea.
I watched my hands flicker,
Merge into shade, dissolve.
I stood trying to grasp
What the darkness was doing.
Then an engine hummed in the driveway,
Tires crunching asphalt,
A car hummed into the garage. Voices.
The kitchen door opened.
The darkness retreated
Behind the sofa and beneath solid chairs.
The simple shapes returned,
Pulled across a boundary into night
From a summer evening on University Street.
Aug 5, 2015
Aug 5, 2015 at 2:38 PM UTC