His name is John.
 
A tough life he’s led,
        partly by choice,
        to be sure.
His daily companions, honey bees,
and a rude belching camel,
who, when she finally breathed her foul-mouthed last,
gave up her pelt to cover his back
through the icy chill of  desert nights.
 
        Oh yes, the desert freezes.
The sun beats down, baking to a crisp all day,
chapping lips and drying tears, and salting cheeks
so that the night frost can then bite to the marrow,
and chill the soul to a new awareness of mortality.
 
John is his name,
wildman his calling.
It’s no wonder,
      given his birth to a silenced priest and a wise crone
      both convinced by an angel that he was
formed awefully,  fearfully in his mother’s womb
expressly to overthrow
the comfortable numbness of quietism,
to uproot hypocrisy with scorching speech as searing as the desert sun
and to foretell divine judgment with the icy candour of a desert moon.
 
John is his name
“Repent!” is his logo.
Prophet is his uniform:
mat-haired, stick-ribbed John.
Baptizer is his trade.
Waist deep in the rocky Jordan,
thrusting  heads under brackish water,
clutching slick, newborn hands
grasping for air,  for life,
all the while scanning the
desert sands for that narrowest of highways
upon which the sandalled feet of God’s Anointed
would trample
all injustice in his Advent.
 
 
 
 
                                                                 ©Elisabeth  R. Jones, 2008, 2012