270 and 271

He drove from Texas, eighteen hours straight,

and wouldn’t look but once into my eye.

He paid in person at my lodging gate

and turned away with one great, heavy sigh.

His business could be daring, dauntless, bold--

but probably just business as we know.

A meeting, or perhaps a product sold,

that’s how most of these people come and go.

But couriers of old medieval time

we decorate with fanciful romance.

Will they, some hundred years from now, too rhyme

about these business men and their finance?

To swim in this commercial-littered sea--

who signed for it? And did we all agree?

~~~

1 Nephi 3 and 4:

We went to fetch a bounty of great price

that couldn’t be replaced by any hand,

now held within the clutches of the vise

of one great, rich, and idolatrous man.

One of our tries was luck, a simple chance,

and ended in my brother sitting down

inside his house, as if by happenstance,

thence, clearly without tact, chased out of town.

Past that we tried our hand at trade, to see

if sacrifice was what we were required.

But even this was not, apparently,

what fate, or he, insisted or desired.

But when I tried with God beside my mind,

fate gave me more than what I’d sought to find.