Forerunners

The feathered clouds fingering in from the west
portend a downpour in a day or two,
though for now they’re high and dry.

The night before the battle,
spies slink in like cheetahs
to assess the enemy camp.

John the Baptist came, he declared,
to announce the one whose sandals
he was unfit to tie.

Moses smashed the tablets in a fit of rage,
then trudged back up the mountain
to fetch the second edition.

If journalism is the first draft of history,
then a poem is a premature stab
at all that words can scarcely say.

Ditto, prayer—a call in the dark for the light,
a bird singing an hour before the dawn,
a parched heart’s surety of the rain.

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This poem also appears in the January 2023 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 88, No. 1, page 8). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.