Immersion, 1984

Immersion, 1984

Ryan Apple

Gone the eggshell blue baptistry,
the clammy, dim-lit basement,

and the country church’s hymning
of Now I Belong to Jesus.

Gone the gold certificate,
the NAS Bible embossed with my name,

and even my father’s strong, steady arms
gently dipping me under the surface.

What did I know, seven years old?
As much as any

who know not the hour,
who cannot will one white hair black

or number the remaining cubits
in a span of life.

Approximated milestones,
manmade watersheds,

gone like everything I thought
my hand could grasp.

Yet here is the water I die in,
the water I am born in,

the only water I swim in—
yesterday, today, forever.

---

Ryan Apple
Poet & Teacher

Ryan Apple is a Music Professor at Great Lakes Christian College in Lansing, Michigan, who has released a chapbook, Stars And Sparrows Alike (Finishing Line). His poetry has also appeared in Ekstasis, Orchards Poetry Journal, Solum, and in the anthology In A Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (Poiema/Cascade).

Photography by Marcelo Brigato