Guest Post: “Finding Cumorah,” by Nani Lii S. Furse
by Patricia | 10.26.09Manchester County, New York, 1823
Late September
washes a season’s green
beyond field and village
and age seventeen;
only leaves
rinsed in afterglow
stir at Joseph’s homespun
passing.
He once knelt
in April grove,
drenched with that glory
of Father and Son.
Then summer wove roots
through his harrowed soul
as those parched by mockery
claimed the heavens
closed.
Autumn wind
shimmers into the trees,
quickening vision
of his pending task:
these hands will lift voices
silenced by stone,
fullness like morning
tide gathering
home.
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Nani Lii S. Furse is a SAHM*, proof that she’s learning textese in an effort to communicate with her teens and young adult children. She earned a BA in English from SUU when it was Southern Utah State College and continues to enjoy life in that scenic area with her husband and three energetic sons who still remain at home.
“Finding Cumorah” was first published in the Sept. 2009 issue of the New Era (49).
*Stay-at-home-mom
October 26th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Lovely poem, Nani.
While we sometimes celebrate the fact of Joseph’s vision opening to him in nature, we don’t much explore the connection between his vision and its natural setting. I like poems and other work that take that relationship into their accounts (and recounts).
Thank you for writing this.
October 26th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Your poem makes me feel as though the First Vision, et al, were not so different from the instinct of a bird that feels the drive to migrate south for the winter. That reminded me of many aspects of life where instinctive urges mix with spiritual drives and we can’t tell where one begins and the other ends. Not that we need to.
Very nicely done.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
.
I also find it interesting how he then shared his religion almost exclusively in natural settings throughout his life.