John the B and Me
I’ve had in my own way my desert days,
Though never ate
A locust, never held a crowd enrapt
By pointing out to them how trapped,
How reprobate,
How lost they were, adrift in sinful ways.
Yet from that place where I in comfort dwelt
I could not see
Beyond the limited parameters
Of my own will nor know the grace that stirs
Up fervency,
And desert nonetheless that surely felt.
My prophecy is one of self-reproach:
I’d somehow lost
The knack to see Him in the crowd and could
Not realize His nearness till I stood
Before His cross
Yet somehow had not noted His approach.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, Amethyst Review, America Magazine, Pensive Journal, Forma Journal, and The Society of Classical Poets. He is a certified catechist with the Archdiocese of New York, a Benedictine oblate of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, NJ, and editor of The Catholic Poetry Room.
Amethyst Review 