Nauvoo

Twilight on the water, and in the west the hallows
Of a newer England, where wisteria blooms
As suddenly as spring. Swallows rouse the sun
To the flickering of shadows, and an ending.
Joseph lay across the shadow of Ephraim and the fallow
Light of the river. Sorrow ranged in the whispering
Of townsmen who walked nearby to encumber the silence
Of death, to raise it in a memory of light far west
As the memory of sun. The temple stone was sun
In the glory of remembrance, when Michael came
In the fantasy of truth to remember Eden.
Eden was here, before the bright martyrdom,
When Joseph fell from a window in his suffering
And dying. Nauvoo is kept in silence
Now; the dismal streets fold into shadows,
Where memory disappears. But what remains
Is the western trail, where he will be taken
In the descendency of his older brother
To rise into the shadows of the sun, into the veils
Of tomorrow. Remember tomorrow, he might say,
As the stone reflects the permanence of belief.
The sun is later there, settling far west,
Remembering them, in the descendency of time,
In Nauvoo again, streets of legend once again,
And temples that reach further back in memory,
Into old belief made new again, in Zurich
And the East, in Germany and Palestine,
In Zion once again: Nauvoo.