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He called to me thrice in the early months, before the cold set in.
I heard and I knew He was calling1 to me for preparations to begin.
I heard Him first, His voice on the wind, as I silently slept in my bed.
The winds blew eerily through window panes and eerier still through my head.
Comfortable and warm in pellucid pause, I nearly push His call from my mind.
Yet, somehow His whispers penetrate me, "Hearken now to these winds foreign, strange, and unkind."
O'er the globe these Winds of Change have blown, brushing cheek of man, woman and child.
They blow fiercely to wake us from slumbering state, they blow fiercely and harshly and wild.
Awaken, oh man, from thy blindness2 and bliss!3 A strange new world draws nigh.
Hear the warning carried on these Winds of Change as they subtly yet fiercely blow by.
He called to me next from the wings of a bird; a falcon in feathery flight,
Condescending from grandeur and silvery slope to the valley of clay and false light.4
His screech scathes the ear and is wicked and wary. I weather seven days of his wrath.
Its startling station of warning, again, to all those who lie in his path.5
On the cusp of the breeze in the heights of the sky he can see what lies on the horizon —
Visions of pestilence, terror and drought, he sees the skies darken,6 he sees the field wizen.
A lonely call, a wuthering cry,
It pierces the ear and moistens the eye.
The finis ... the villain, the Raven, the rogue comes to steal a fuliginous feast
From the nest of the faithful and heart-hopeful bird, he leaves not one egg in the least.
Yet somehow his thieving has filled my measure with a runic tenebrious tone —
Yea, this dolorous scoundrel, this infernal fiend, the dark end to these ternary tidings doth moan.
He has fallen from flames, he is darker than pitch.
A Goliath of Gath — they are his clutches which
Shall plunder both staff and stay7
Lo, dark is the night and frightful the day.
Yea, He called to me thrice amid bud and bloom, before the cold set in.
I heard and I knew He was calling to me for preparations to begin.
1. Alma 5:38, 1 Samuel 3:9
2. Isaiah 56:10, Ether 8:24
3. Amos 6:1, Zechariah 1:15
4. Matthew 24:24
5. While his path is the whole Earth, this speaks especially to those in Utah Valley.
6. Joel 2:2
7. Isaiah 3:1
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