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And Now I Know There are Fields of Cucumbers Somewhere – A Poem for Haftarah Devarim by Rick Lupert

And Now I Know There are Fields of Cucumbers Somewhere - A Poem for Haftarah Devarim by Rick Lupert
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July 20, 2018
And Now I Know There are Fields of Cucumbers Somewhere - A Poem for Haftarah Devarim by Rick Lupert

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz

Everyone has a father, or had a father
who hopes they’ll grow up to match or
increase their success. Little did Amoz
know his son would have a whole book
named after him we’d be reading for
thousands of years after his own children
were gone.

An ox knows his owner and a donkey his master’s crib

…but Israel seems to have trouble
remembering the great Father in the sky
who, literally, laid down the law for us to
read and refer to on the daily.

And the daughter of Zion shall be left like a
hut in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field

It never occurred to me there were entire fields
of cucumbers, but now I realize there couldn’t
be any other way. I understand the isolation implied
by stationing oneself in a lodge in the middle of
a cucumber field, but I’m having trouble wanting
to do anything else.

You shall no longer bring vain meal-offerings,
it is smoke of abomination to Me;

We keep stopping by the House of the Book
with our offerings, like the modern day Jews
who show up only on Yom Kippur with the
cutest baby goats we can find only to learn
it’s not working anymore. The Divine is
not seeing past the bribe. Is not willing to
erase the behavioral debt.

Your New Moons and your appointed seasons
My soul hates, they are a burden to Me

This isn’t good news. Wasn’t it You who
made the moon, and us who just waits for it
to show up every night? This is the kind of
paradigm shift that shakes the foundation
that makes us sit up in our sins
that makes a Jerusalem fall.


God Wrestler: a poem for every Torah Portion by Rick LupertLos 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.

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