Lehi Tries to Explain

“there came a pillar of fire and dwelt upon a rock”

How the liquid branches of that burning tree

whipped upward as if trying to shake

themselves free of the nothing

they consumed, as if they remembered

or anticipated spirits shucking

off bodies, finding a lighter form.

How when night came the pillar wound

tighter, wrapping itself in itself

against the desert dark, the deep chill

of wilderness, a place outside city

walls, a place without the borders born

of lamps assembled against the gloom.

I watched the fiery dance for days, he said,

and knew the flame dwelt there as I

too would one day dwell there, rock-

bound and burning to rise night and day

in a land not yet ready to be called home,

not yet settled, not yet promised.