This, my son, is where

we first beheld the flame.

This, my son, is where

we first came to build this

Tabernacle To God’s Name.

This, my son, is where

we carried silken cloth,

gold threads,

linen drape.

This is where we dug the deep cisterns,

the wells bubbled cool fresh water,

an oasis in a dry land.

Here we raised high

stone and marble walls

dotted with diamonds, emeralds, topaz.

Gold and silver chain, thin as gossamer

draped the burnished mahogany alter of sacrifice.

This, my son, is where,

to worship,

came the tribes of our Fathers.

To remember the glory.

To pray to the blaze.

Generations have trod the smoothed stone-paved road

to this Place,

this sacred, consecrated memory.

Here we proclaim that brief moment in our history

in this Most Holy Place.

Here the ancient grand sire tried to kneel.

His great grand son grasped his weakened arms

to aid his bowing down.

Here the young man searched around him,

strained to find one rich stone

or one link of gold

or the ruins of an alter.

He saw nothing but a small mound of cold ash,

(any flame having long burned away)

He stared down at the old man

groveling among the rubble and scattered stones.

He could not understand the old man’s prayer.

He did not really want to try.

With a sigh,

he walked past the place where once

the fire had seared the flesh of those

who came to close!

(or so he had once been told, sitting at his father’s knee.)

Dabbing a spot of,

perhaps,

dust, from his eye,

and kicking to scatter the cold coals

around remains of,

perhaps,

some ancient shrine,

he walked through the entrance door,

leaving the ruins of that which was,

once,

adored,

never looking back.

The old man’s mumblings

lost in the low moan

of a desert wind.