By Dayna Patterson
Or right-click here to download the audio file: Still Mormon
1.
I’m Mormon the way stars—rubbed out at noon,
robbed by sun—still burn
2.
The way a geode empty of its quartz
is still stone
3.
The way a whisper is still a breath
carved by tongue and teeth
4.
I’m Mormon the way a cathedral is still a cathedral, even after
iconoclasts shatter the windows, decapitate the saints,
5.
blunt their hands, topple their trunks from tiered niches,
tear them from cubbies, pillars, plinths,
a restoration of plain glass letting in
bolts of austere grey silk-light
6.
I’m Mormon the way a Greek Orthodox is primarily Greek
and less orthodox,
my own icons gathered under sky-blue domes—
7.
Madonna of Sagebrush, her foot crushing crickets,
seagull perched on her shoulder,
Liahona in her left hand, sego lily in her right,
beneath her image a red desert
where all may light a beeswax candle to illuminate her
honied look, beneficent smile
8.
The way you can take the girl out of Utah but can’t take Utah
out of the girl, the way my hair and skin settle into dry
heat and Cache Valley smog, my shoulders Wellsville peaks,
my paunch and thighs Wasatch foothills, my veins mapping
Bear River on right and Logan River on left, all their tributaries,
9.
lakes, marshes, canals, brooks, streams, ditches, rills
10.
I’m Mormon the way a swimmer caught in riptide and carried out
makes peace with blue death but wears a thin suit
of hope that her body will be transmuted into
11.
something lovely and holy: sea star, anemone, tiger shark,
more than watermark left to fade on the page, more than a name
writ in water
12.
I’m Mormon the way the deeply drowned tree
ghosting beneath the boat is still tree
13.
The way a sugar maple tapped of its sweetness
stretches its leaves to hold the sun
14.
How the choir keeps singing after the beautiful
organ fails, wind moving through brass pipes
not making a sound, and the singers robed in velvet
continue a capella,
emerald voices floating luminous like curls of prayer-smoke
15.
How the valley dweller watches her mountains glow,
giants jeweled on a wildfire night, how she grows as close as she dares
to damage, to catastrophe, wills the chopper pilot safe journey
from lake to lick of flame
16.
How the valley dweller remembers the green hill
hid in an April shroud
17.
Like the peahen in the empresses’ menagerie
among the glossy, iridescent eyes
18.
Like a kangaroo among the beauty
19.
I’m still Mormon the way a zoo’s golden eagle
worries clipped wings, and also the way a rewilded wolf
tastes captivity in her one chipped tooth
20.
I’m Mormon the way skunk-smell lingers,
long after the boys lure it into the girls’ cabin,
slam a wire cage over its surprise, its vicious
21.
hiss-and-spray, the way the stinkcloud
clings to hair, to skin, to grandmother’s yellow patchwork
quilt the girl should’ve left home but brought for comfort
and how could she know boys could be so mean
22.
I’m Mormon the way ham hock soup is still pork knuckle
is still pig, after slaughterhouse, after blood drains
and butcher’s cut through bone, chopping shank
23.
from leg, metatarsal from tibia, boiling down gristle
and skin to soften the meat and beans
24.
I’m still Mormon the way scars glisten, or angiomas
cauterized from left temple
resurface elsewhere like beads of blood
25.
As the beauty berry tree purples her fruit
in the dusky bloom of autumn night
26.
As the peach tree drops its one swelling
to the ground
27.
I’m Mormon the way a Baroque theater house
combusts in its special effects, gilded ceiling
giving way to open sky and an audience of rain
28.
I’m still Mormon the way an astronaut
watches from the cupola’s seven windows
as sun-slit lifts the dark from earth’s contours
29.
The way a tethered astronaut turns to face the deep
black of space while loving the sun
on her back, the tug of her umbilical
30.
I’m Mormon the way a student graduates in debt
to her alma mater, school of the slowest clock and endless
scripture chase, school of humdrum,
31.
hymn-hum in braided harmony, school of Wonder
Bread, passed hand to hand in chapel hush,
the paper thimbles’ drop a soft percussion
32.
I’m still Mormon the way a poem is a room
and refuses the period’s lock
33.
Still Mormon the way paper gives itself over to
blade and page and pen,
but remembers what it was like to have roots, thick
woody skin, lenticels, xylem,
loved by sunlight in a copse of its kin
