One somehow felt that it would be
more dignified and orderly:
a mighty voice, a trumpet sound,
a slow ascension from the ground
with angels in attendance to
facilitate the chosen few.
Believers would be gathered in,
but those that were immersed in sin,
the damned, the spiritually blind,
would be ignored and left behind.
It turned out not to be that way:
there was no heavenly array
of cherubs, nor a mighty horn,
but groups of people, scythed like corn,
were swept aloft, with fearful cries,
into a spacecraft, great in size,
vast as a whale, white as a dove,
which hovered, shimmering, above.
We watched in awe, alarmed, perplexed,
then hid from sight, lest we be next.
