new haiku

I asked my friend Virginia Stem Owens, who’s written 13 books and many poems but never a haiku, if she’d write one for my blog.  She was getting ready to go to a Lenten talk on Jonah.  She called back two hours later with this:

Jonah, full of spleen,

Lost both to whale and to worm

In God’s gotcha game.

I loved the way she summarized the story and the humor and alliteration of “God’s gotcha game.”  I didn’t mention that Virginia is a well-known Christian writer and was my boss at The Milton Center (for Excellence in Christian Writing.)  

About the Jonah story: I’d forgotten that after he got spewed out of the whale and actually went to Ninevah, as God had wanted, he didn’t go to the public square and proclaim.  Jonah hid under a bush and mouthed “Repent.” But a worm came and ate the leaves of the bush and Jonah was exposed.  The people heard him and repented.  This pissed Jonah off, because he never liked the people of Ninevah in the first place.