The Fare Forward Poetry Competition: Third Place
Of the Baptized Apostate Hiking in Drought
By Betsy K. Brown
Not even a saint could sate the tongue of
A once-wet man standing on a hill
Looking over a land where monsoon season
Never came. This man, this land is a land where plants rattle
Like skulls’ teeth, where each canyon is a dusty lung
Where trailheads gasp for want of water,
For lack of green
This land, this man was sprinkled once,
Dunked once,
Called beloved by someone who was well-pleased.
Millions of years ago this desert was an ocean.
This mountaintop was the seashore.
I reach out a bare toe and dip it into the air.
Will I feel the water there, still?
Betsy K. Brown is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, with a focus on creative nonfiction. She is a teacher and chair of humanities at an Arizona high school, and loves to share the goodness of words and stories with young people in the midst of the beauty of the American southwest.