A Utah Psalm

Wasatch Mountains by John Morgan

Beyond the Salt Lake
where the flat earth broke
in a cleft of the Wasatch range,
on a ridge like a knife’s edge,
I gazed at Hidden Peak,
a widened cloud-gate
where plumes lifted and plunged,
in clusters of low cirrus
that trailed in a tunnel effect.
The aroma of the oceans
clung to the drifting mass.
On the lower slopes bundles
of grass were burned by the sun,
the straw the color of sackcloth
on the ground’s living skin.
It was late afternoon,
when we face our sins and forgive them,
and the holy — made without hands —
lets what is familiar
become no longer familiar.
From an aspen stand, rooted
shoots of leaning pillars,
a mule deer emerged
and stopped to look at my face,
a glance without love or hate,
as it balanced on shattered stone.
I felt like the hunter who stumbled
into a sacred grove
and became himself the hunted.
Or a child with a prize fish
in a plastic carrying bag —
a pliable, liquid lens —
that enlarged the small swimmer
with iridescent scales —
the fear of holding or dropping
this life was one emotion.
And suddenly this spirit,
disguised as a running shadow,
bolted, jarring the watery
vessel of terror in me,
emptying it all
into the Cottonwood Creek,
while the mountain was watching me.

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