The Men of Huntsville

And moving thro’ a mirror clear 
That hangs before her all the year, 
Shadows of the world, appear. 
—Tennyson 

The men of Huntsville proper 
Found her there— 
Halfway down the Glacier’s eastward face 
With three thick feet of glacial glass 
Separating Huntsville’s Priesthood 
From its past. 

They had not often walked 
The frozen body that lay between 
Their homes and those of the Brigham Saints 
(Who were sent to that far place 
To civilize the Savage and grow wheat 
For a Mormon Prophet who died. 
The Prophet gone, 
Wheat enough grown in the easier valleys, 
And the Lamanite long since dead of his savior’s pox,
The people of Brigham had remained 
To bear their children, 
Fill their tiny chapel’s yard, 
And walk the umbilical path 
To Huntsville.)

John Jacob McKay was the first to know
The naked body and crystalline shroud,
Whose existence not one man of Huntsville
Would publicly allow, 
But, quiet, in the later evening, wondered at,
While longing for the Glacier’s eastward height,
And the naked woman, 
And John McKay’s memory. 
So John Jacob walked the Glacier 
And searched the ice where he’d been before—
To prove the point 
And make right what the Priesthood wrongly hoped—
But could not find her 
Nor any trace of what he knew he’d known.
Whether shifting frost, 
The floe’s further slide down the mountain,
Or snow-blind memory was to blame, 
John Jacob McKay stumbled back from the Glacier,
After three fruitless years of desperate search Between Huntsville and Brigham, 
To die.

Now and again other men, 
Lost in its ecstacy of white and counterfeit heat,
Wandered out of the Glacier 
To babble nonsense stanzas 
Of a Desdemona and her Caucasian lover 
Snared in passionless embrace. 
And with each new telling of the incredible tale
The men of Huntsville wondered 
From behind their bolted doors 
(The rough-hewn pioneer portals 
Which contained the men and passion 
That should have, elsewise, leaped into the streets,
Through the town, and up the slopes—
To melt the mountain if they must, 
But to see, 
To see! 
To know the naked creature 
As they dreamed McKay had known her 
Long before) 
In the quiet night, 
In Huntsville, 
And alone. 

Until, oneday, word was sent from Brigham—
Down the path that traced the Glacier’s southern edge—
That a boy was lost somewhere on the mountain
And they who dug the graves of Brigham 
Would search westward down to Huntsville, 
While the Huntsville Saints should scout eastward to them,
With the Glacier 
(The Glacier!) 
The Glacier and its treasure 
In between.