Mark Stucky Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

Reluctant Rogue Redo?

Reluctant Rogue Redo?

By Mark Stucky
If Jonah, reluctant rogue of a prophet,
had desired to visit Ninevah,
instead of fleeing the other direction,
how different would his story have been?

More succinct but less interesting?
No stormy maritime mishap?
No hard-to-swallow fish story?
No prayer in the belly of the beast?

Just marching through streets,
preaching his pithy prediction?
Would Ninevah still have repented?
Or did the whale-of-a-tale
add conviction to his message?

Jonah was not unlike me,
a spiritual rogue of today,
refusing to answer my call,
enduring intolerable storms,
crying in the belly of my beast.
Like Jonah, reversing direction,
might I yet find my path
and emerge from the depths?


(First published in Poetica Magazine, 3 March 2022. See also my poem “Whale Wayfarers,” telling two cautionary whale tales about hazardous opposite extremes in following one’s “calling.”)

(Image by anonymous on Pixabay.com.)

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