A Road Poem for Haftarah Vayetzei by Rick Lupert

The road is long
The road is long but
still leads to where you are going

The road may take fourteen years
Don’t let the u-turn at seven alarm you
Keep on the road

The u-turn is all
part of the plan
The road will not lie to you

You may not be prepared for
the weather along the road
the fork in the road

the spoon in the road
the Golden Calf in the road
Don’t jump off the road

Don’t wander into the woods
Don’t hire people to
build a different road

This is the road built
by the Great Road Builder
in the sky

The sky where there
are no roads but
we’re all on our way there

after this road
this road with the turns
and confusing signs

and uncomfortable surfaces
Despite all this
I would drive this road

any multiple of
fourteen years to end up
in her arms

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 21 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 “Donut Famine” (Rothco Press, December 2016) 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.