About this Poem:

This poem virtually wrote itself. As developers and the Utah Legislature look for reasons to develop Utah Lake into many islands of housing and other eagerly hand-crafted sprawl, I felt the need to opine. This greedy idea only bestows an insufferable means to facilitate some imaginary quest to “improve water quality.” The irony seems to be the only stable landform that rises from these vast waters. Using money to develop a public treasure artificially will never offer real, lasting, and sustainable solutions. Instead, as is often true in similar cases (the Great Salt Lake pumping project comes to mind), we need to simply learn from our pasts and leave nature alone. Then, we can focus our effort to relieve the pressures constricting its long, beautiful shores of peace and tranquility. Nature looks far beyond our short-term objectives.

A bit of geography is valuable as a preface to those who may not know about this watery paradise. Utah Lake is connected to the Great Salt Lake by the Jordan River. And there is a reason for this river’s name. It is a hallowed topographical feature that mirrors the hydrogeography of the Holy Land, but the waters flow north. Hence my unique and devout take on this priceless resource. As is apparent—I am trying to appeal to a particular audience. Utah Lake has been used and abused far too much. At this stage of her life—she deserves sacred space within a protected sanctuary of healing and rest. Only such a remedy can offer us similar and lasting peace.

In broad Utah Valley life still flows
into a reflecting heart, a modest
drifting sea of miracles
dampened in soft grey shadows
of verdant mountains.

Pulsing into the Jordan River, she carries
nurseries of life toward timeless
mirrors of a receding salt sea, captive
beneath the fiery edges
of its peculiar horizon.
Vaporous spirits wait to return to her.

As Utah Lake’s troubled waters pray
for untainted tributaries,
we should reflect upon another master
who restores living waters
to histories that churn in turbid ignorance.

He was born with passion,
nurtured by loving parents in Nazareth,
west of the coasts of Galilee.
He was baptized in the River Jordan
and transformed its deep
waters into wine. He walked
on the water’s troubled waves.

Along the shores of fear
and self-doubt, he beckoned
his first disciples. He taught
a sermon upon a gentle mount
overlooking azure reflections
of a heaven few could comprehend.

He calmed her ferocious storms
and fed five thousand faithful
in her vale. With the water
of forgiveness, he filled empty nets
and hearts, overflowing
with enduring hope.

These patterns in Galilee
reflect our sacred responsibilities
as Mother Nature labors
to mend the misdeeds of “progress”
with the slower passions of fresh life.
Tampering is desecration.

If we fill the nets of redemption
with our faux manmade islands
bagged in filthy speculation,
we lose our integration
with the spirit of divine creation.

We will dwell in an abomination
of desolation, disrupting all the lives
we cannot see and all the lives we can.

We are blessed to live within
her arms, the water’s obscure but emerald calm
that washes us toward better shores.

We are echoes of this gift of Utah Lake
a natural temple and irreplaceable sea— 
our own Galilee.