Fish Food – a poem by Larry Pike

Fish Food


	“And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” ―Jonah 1:17a (RSV)

	“A Lobster Diver in Cape Cod Says a Humpback Whale Scooped Him Up
and Spat Him Out.” ―NPR story, June 12, 2021


They said, inking their scrolls, that Jonah snoozed 
below deck while a storm swelled and the roiling sea
threatened to splinter the suddenly unstable ship.
But who really believed, devising this scripture

hundreds of years later, that Jonah snored 
under God’s disappointed eye as desperate sailors
tested every seaman’s skill and uttered every prayer
they knew to save their battered boat? We don’t

need CSI to see through such feeble perjury. What scribe
supposed this spin was essential to selling the story? Jonah,
on the lam from God, a last-minute fare on a westerly cruise,
couldn’t have imagined evading the Lord’s command,

wouldn’t have shuddered had the Coast Guard drawn astern
and bullhorned his name into the wailing wind. We can note
that Jonah manned up in the waves’ wildest moments
and owned his transgression, told the crew to give him up,

but his capitulation doesn’t merit a late-news live feed;
many prophets came around when their options dissipated
like the raging whitecaps once Jonah was tossed into the foam. 
The same may be said for Jonah’s contrition in the belly

of the giant God dispatched to gulp him out of the brine.
Who among us doubts that Jonah in the dripping darkness
pled for deliverance, pledged any sacrifice, promised obedience?
Anything to get out. The depth of Jonah’s conversion might

concern us if we don’t also consider our own reflected faith. 
Instead, chew on this: God knew Jonah wouldn’t be the last
to flee a call, knew the slackers and deniers would multiply
over time. Perhaps the episode’s design wasn’t to school Jonah

but to deter future watery escapes by refining the marine diet.
To great quantities of krill, crustaceans and modest fish add
an occasional human. Bony and brittle, sure, perhaps too bitter,
but an evolutionary gurgle that should make us pause at the shore,

cause us to question how far we ought to swim or if it’s safe to sail
toward the false safe harbor of our own distant Tarshish. 
Our whales will probably puke us back into the sea. But maybe not.
You know what they say about creatures, once they get a taste.

Larry Pike’s poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Fathom Magazine, St. Katherine Review, and twice previously in Amethyst Review. Finishing Line Press published his collection Even in the Slums of Providence (October 2021). He lives with his wife, Carol, in Glasgow, Kentucky.