Good News Comes from Angels – A Poem for Haftarah Naso by Rick Lupert

The unnamed wife of Manoah is the real story.
Just referred to as his wife or the woman.

She is the one whose barren womb
is filled with prophecy.

She is the one who must abstain for
months from wine and

all the good stuff, while her gift,
her burden, the boy whose hair

must never be cut, grows inside her.
By default she calls her husband

when the angel arrives. I’d mention
his name again, but, hardly seems fair.

She is the one who comforts
her frightened husband when the

angel exits through the fire.
The angel who never

told his name. The angel who
refused to eat. She is the real story –

This women, this angel, this
protector of life, who

met a stranger in a field, who
called him an angel.

Good news comes from strangers.
Open your doors, women and men.

You never know when your visitor
is one of them.

Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 22 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “Beautiful Mistakes” (Rothco Press, May 2018) and edited the anthologies “A Poet’s Siddur: Shabbat Evening“,  “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.