Baptism

After me comes he who is mightier than I.
MARK 1:7

How he waits, holds himself just under
that rim of baptismal shore, gazing
with water-wrapt eyes into a webbing
of sky and sunlight, cracked open—how
he longs to remain submerged in that
mumbled current—and when he finally rises,
how they see everything in his reflection,
in how the water, the sunlight, touch
him, and how they seek the place he
dwells, while he wanders in the desert.