1. Visions
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask
of God … and it shall be given him.
New York, Palmyra, circa 1820.
He was an average farm boy with a limp
that taught him how to wrestle. He could whip
most kids and pinned a goat once for a penny.
As for his folks, well, they were nice: she
would darn the socks, he would smoke his pipe,
and Joe would read the Good Book by the lamp.
Young Joseph took it all so literally—
when he read James 1:5, the needle of hope
stitched the words into his startled heart.
Who can blame him? Don’t we want it too?
To follow tremors into a grove of trees,
essay a prayer, to see how sunlight shies
at glory, to know at least one verb is true.
2. Martyrs
Willard, … you will stand where the balls
will fly around you like hail and men will fall
dead by your side, and there never shall a ball
injure you. –Joseph Smith
When bullets flew like hail around the men
in the upper room of Carthage jail, one
took a ball in the face and fell declaring, I
am a dead man. Another—struck in the thigh
then pocket watch—was hit three, four, five
times as he dropped and crawled toward the bed.
The seer, whom the black-painted faces
were after, leapt from the window as gunfire
from behind and from below pinned him
in early evening light—prophet in amber.
Oh Lord, my God! he cried, then shattered
on the ground. And you, Grandfather, alone
were left standing, cane drawn, ear grazed and deaf
from the blasts, head echoing with prophecy.
3. Exodus
Found poem from The Discourses of Brigham Young
When we left our homes, we picked up what the mob
did not steal and followed Indian trails,
ran by the compass, and when we left the Missouri
we followed the Platte. We killed rattlesnakes
by the cord, built bridges till our backs ached
or ferried our people across. When we arrived
we found a few Indians, crickets, rabbits
and wolves, but as for a green tree or a green field
we found nothing of the kind. We made and broke
the road from Nauvoo to Salt Lake, piled together
with broken-down horses—ring-boned, spavined
pole evil, fistula and hipped; oxen with three legs
and cows with one teat. You may say that I jest.
Just so. In truth, we came naked and barefoot.
4. Temples
The spirits of the dead gathered around me,
wanting to know why we did not redeem them.
–Wilford Woodruff
I’ve celebrated much, but this is grand!
Who’d have guessed, vivas eternas for those
who’ve failed. See Lincoln in his robe, his toes
like peeking plums. Take my spirit-hand
Ms. Charlotte Bronte, help me comprehend
the vicariousness I see. I chose
to sing of myself on earth, to spread like leaves
of grass my pages on the winds around
the world. But now I’d give my hat and beard
to hear Walt Whitman on the lips of he
who claims to save the dead. Several times
I swam in Hudson’s flowing stream and cheered
that I was free. But now, give this to me—
this freedom found in covenants, measures, rhymes.
Jim Richards‘s work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Copper Nickel, Sugar House Review, Prairie Schooner, Hotel Amerika, and is forthcoming from Tahoma Literary Review. He has received nominations for Best New Poets, three Pushcart Prizes, and was granted a Literary Arts Fellowship through the Idaho Commission on the Arts. His first collection is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025, and a second collection from By Common Consent Press in 2027. He lives in Rexburg where he teaches literature and creative writing at BYU-Idaho. Connect with him at jim-richards.com.
