Far West

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.