Dream of the Airy Mob

by Roger Biehn

Every generation will see its ending days
and some will fancy them the end of the end
and kindle on altars mounded of brick chunks
and concrete lumps one gasoline soaked tower of flame
to mark a runway for the Glory to land.

Are these then days of Cyrus? I think not, though
exiles purport to descry their way homeward;
days of Absalom, then? No, though rebels confuse
their paths in the wastes; perhaps days of Jeroboam
as worshippers abandon temples of their

despotic lords and reinvent their worship
with the mouldings of their democratic hands,
a throne engorged with bronzed hooves and horns and hopes
that can stand firm and hold aloft the unwieldy dream of the airy mob.

Upon an unveiled sky Glory writes His presence
where a bolder crowd of worshippers assembles
before His face; a Glory that can bind heart
and universe, display itself in house-trained mobs
that care for fellowmen, toil at the workbench
of diligence to build the life of love.

For ballots cannot bless the anointing vessel,
clamors cannot convert the vacuum of absence
to the never-arriving Glory; the flames
they feed crackle out echoes of the empty
Holy of Holies. Their images are billboarded to picket
fence the eastern sky but Glory comes with the clouds.

Roger Biehn is a corporate controller and part-time poet.

Photography by Kenneth Godoy