St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness, by Clif Mason

St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness, by Caravaggio (Italy) 1604

St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness
 
Tousle-haired & thin, not muscular or hard, 
you met few expectations of a wild man 
prophet. Your scarlet wrap flows round 
your waist like the sash of a king & spills 
down your thigh. Your body is illumined 
by a Cascata delle Marmore of moonlight. 
 
Seated on one boulder, you rest your arms 
on another. Your hooded, downturned eyes 
are fixed within. You don’t look at us at all, 
yet you have an authority a king 
would murder to possess, has murdered, 
but still cannot own. 
 
Your slight reed cross is stronger 
than any scepter. It topples the walls 
of palaces & cities, of empires. 
When you speak, soft as the rustling 
of chukar feathers, night’s storms go silent. 
Humbled, they have nothing to say. 
 
When you speak, the stony, punishing land 
rings like a hammered iron bell, summoning 
the people to hear & give thanks. 
Happy in your lonely company, 
the river rejoices as it flows upon the earth, 
the earth that will become your body’s lost, 
 
forgotten sepulcher.

Clif Mason

A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Clif Mason is the author of Knocking the Stars Senseless (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and The Book of Night & Waking (winner of the Cathexis Northwest Press Chapbook Prize). His poems have appeared at Rattle, Poet Lore, and Orbis International Literary Journal (in the UK). A former Fulbright Fellow to Rwanda, Africa, he lives with his wife, a visual artist, on the edge of a forest in Bellevue, Nebraska.