The Missing
Missing for more than half a century,
missing from the California desert
where you were born and lived three months,
from the bassinette I lifted my chin over
when you cried or seemed to laugh,
missing because of the hole in your heart,
missing from the drinking fountain
in the corridor of the hospital, where
mother poured water on your forehead
to baptize you moments before your death.
Baptism saved you from limbo, she told us
later, where babies are happy but never
see God—you were saved for heaven.
Now she’s missing too, she who enacted
the Church’s Baptism of Desire, reserved
for emergencies, no priest in sight.
Emanuel Swedenborg, seer of the afterlife,
wrote that he often visited heaven,
that babies like you grow up radiant there,
reunite with siblings and parents.
Desire only God, Swedenborg and other
mystics say, because his desire is to
unite with us, even during those times
when we think we’ve missed
the final boat, missed our life, but
just outside our door are white
blossoms on the tips of saguaros,
bougainvillea in full bloom,
the bright clarity of desert sunlight.
F.W. “Skip” Renker’s poems have appeared in Awakenings Review, Leaping Clear, Presence, and many other publications, as well as the Atlanta Review and Passages Northanthologies. His books are Sifting the Visible (Mayapple Press), Bearing the Cast (Saint Julian Press), and A Patient Hunger (Atmosphere Press). Skip’s a graduate of Notre Dame and Duke, and has an MFA from Seattle Pacific University.
Amethyst Review 