Hop Hornbeam

In the Sacred Grove 
near Palmyra, New York, 
there’s hardly a tree 
old enough to have been 
around when Joseph 
Smith envisioned the 
Father and the Son; 

except for this 350- 
year-old ironwood 
somewhat off the path 
by the west boundary— 
dark and nearly leafless 
under the canopy, with 
limbs raised to the 

square like some ghostly 
authority—monstrous 
branches that in 1820 
might have been just 
what a fourteen-year-old 
prophet would swing on, 
but now I can’t reach.