by Heather Kaufmann
Manning Provincial Park, BC, July 2021
Luke 3:7-17
Dust billows at our every step
our finger pads and nostrils
lined with the grit of it
as we wend our way
through alpine undergrowth
towards the First Brothers’ peak.
Things are not as they should be:
the grass gone coarse
and sharp as wire
the horizon a haze of smoke
threatening to choke
our lungs in past neglect.
Close to the summit now
a voice ahead calls “fire”
and we run to the cliff’s edge,
see an ashen cloud now rising
over the next ridge, its tips
bone-white against unnatural blue.
Bright beacons flare erratic
at its base and a plane flies
like a thirsting mosquito in and out
of the swelling mass of cloud:
there is no baptism big enough
for this unquenchable flame.
And will there be
a bigger baptism
a greater flame
whose crucible earth
will birth a fruit
more ripe and red
than the brightest blaze
we’ve yet to know?
Here (now)
we pray for rain.
Heather Kaufmann is a New England native, poet, and graduate student of theology in Vancouver, BC. Her recent work has been published or is forthcoming in Ekstasis, CRUX, Christian Century, and Fathom.