That day, they'll all flatten like the sagebrush:
The teenagers on the dark beds of pickup trucks,
The housewives in the white flocks of flapping laundry,
The linemen between the singing phone wires.
They'll have little choice but to flatten,
Grinding their faces deep in the dust from whence they came,
When He rises above the infinite horizon
With dry thunder and winds that funnel down the gulley
Of their open throats, corking the screams.
And the sandstone sings tenor!
And the antelope paws the air!
And the trailers fold into tin squares!
He sweeps across their parceled and fenced desert,
Growing faster than the blue-black thunderheads.
He walks hard, angry as a trespassed rancher,
But in His deep footprints, springwater bubbles.
David Abrams was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, stationed at Ft. Wainwright in Alaska, and worked as a journalist for the post paper when this poem appeared.
Read the Full Article
