Warning in a Dream

by Thomas Davis

I woke with his face still in my head, 
 a handsome young man who looked something like 
     the oil drilling roustabout
 who had lived next to my parent’s house when I was a kid
 rough around the edges with startling blue eyes.
 When he spoke, though, his voice 
     was like the classical music 
 on vinyl records I bought as a teenager 
     when I wasn’t listening to Simon and Garfunkel
 or a country and western star my parents really liked.
  
 “He won’t be like most people expect,” 
     he’d said in the dream.
 “He’ll come out of a tower as opulent,
 and filled with human hubris, as the Tower of Babel,
 shining even when no sun is in the sky,
 and when he speaks, great throngs will gather
 even though pestilence is raging,
 and their shouting and adulation will stir winds 
     spreading disease
 and fan it into the most remote parts of the land.
  
 “He won’t drive around in a beat up, old pickup 
     like many of his followers,
 but will sail in a huge, black limousine fancier than 
     most people’s houses,
 and he’ll use grievance and insult to stir masses 
     that march to Sunday church
 where they worship a humble man, who championed 
     the poor and downtrodden
 and said fat cats had as much chance 
     getting into heaven
 as a rich man had of getting a camel 
     through a needle’s eye.
  
 “And as pestilence spreads and poverty grows 
     out of pestilence,
 dissension and intolerance will enter into people’s spirits,
 and chaos will churn into an earth
 beset by destructive storms, floods, droughts, 
 and great forests burning, spawning tornadoes of flames,
 disasters creating wailing and despair 
     even as the ocean rises
 and voices speaking prophetic warnings 
     can barely be heard above endless tumult.
  
 “O, he won’t be dressed in red or have horns 
     or a pointed tail.
 He’ll wear expensive suits and act like a common man
 with a whirlwind voice singing resentment and anger
 and the exquisite joys and promise of human greed.”
  
 As I woke up the man, looking nothing like an angel, smiled,
 and I felt disoriented,
 wondering if I was waking up, or was trapped, somehow,
 in a continuing dream’s fog.