Resting While Flying, by José A. Alcántara

Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, by Rembrandt van Rijn (Netherlands) 1647

Resting While Flying

It’s the fire that draws them in.
This thing that burns, that flings heat and light
from inside itself. It draws them like a corpse
draws flies – child, goats, cow, shepherd,
the reflections in the water, the whole forest, 
sky and pond, all of it falling toward the fire,
as if fire were a gravitational force, a collapsing in
instead of a forcing out, a warm pair of arms
gathering you close, a way to escape the dark, 
to find that sleep you’ve longed for –
a bed of coals, pillow of flame.

José A. Alcántara

José A. Alcántara has worked at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, on a fishing boat in Alaska, as a baker in Montana, and as a calculus teacher in Cartagena, Colombia. He is the author of The Bitten World: Poems (Tebot Bach, 2022). His poetry has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, and Rattle. He lives in western Colorado and wherever he happens to pitch his tent.