Sometimes We Must be Swallowed “I will not be swallowed,” I believe were Jonah’s exact words before the gaping fish maw folded darkness like a tomb shroud around him. He was stubborn, like his God, clinging to a skeletal certainty he’d hammered into place around him, calling it home. His faith in clockwork sun so fast, only darkness could save him. He brooded in that echoey ribbed cathedral until a storm savaged the sea. He marveled to feel the hurtling vessel of the fish slacken on the untold will of the waves. Wrenching fear like a dagger from his stone of his heart, he laughed—to his surprise— and stood amid the pitching waves and cried the song of all his joy to God.
Alfred Fournier is a writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His poems have appeared in Plainsongs, The Main Street Rag, Third Wednesday, Kind Writers, Ocotillo Review and elsewhere.
Amethyst Review 