 Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Claude Lorrain, 1640s By Jack Stewart We don’t know exactly when this was painted, only that soon the little clearing will be empty, the billowing trees casting shade over the shallows. The sky does not dream of soldiers. Calm water does not believe in footprints. The town—is it big enough to be a city?—is almost a smudge in the background. In an hour, the two men fishing will haul in their net, their catch as silver as an angel’s wing. Right now, the family about to pack their few belongings is sheltered in enough green they cannot imagine the brown vastness of their future, the millennia of their story. And all we know is soon a fugitive god will have disappeared, leaving behind a little sun mixed with shade, a few drowsy birds, and the scent of quiet water. Jack Stewart was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University and was a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. His first book, No Reason, was published by the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The American Literary Review, Nimrod, Image and others.
Jack's other work on Foreshadow: The Return (Poetry, September 2023) Camel and Needle (Poetry, October 2023) Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1) (Poetry, January 2024)
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