In the midst of the troubled centuries
After we arrived in the promised land
Before a king arose to organize us all
We were still figuring out our borders
Using our theological claims to orchestrate
the ongoing holy land-grab.
Our God, the One God is better than
your god, the no-god. I can’t imagine
telling my Van Nuys neighbor
I’ll be taking your house now.
Leave the door unlocked, and try not
to mess up the lawn on your way out.
Wasn’t it enough we were taken out of
slavery? Isn’t freedom enough of a gift?
Why do we need what’s theirs?
And now, thousands of years later
I’m thinking of of Jephthah – The man
with too many h’s in his name.
The man who you don’t want to set loose
in a Palestinian neighborhood, lest he
return with the keys to their homes
and an airspace filled with flying rocks.
Nothing is simple about the details.
Except the one in which we are all
flesh and blood, no matter which side
of the human-drawn lines we are on.
I think of this as I fly over the
vast empty spaces of the world and
watch the news about how people
still can’t get along.
I’m sorry your family didn’t want you
Jephthah. Every little boy deserves
to be nurtured.
The globalist in me prays for
an atlas without country names.
A world without passports.
The primary human interaction
holding hands…everyone given
all they need.
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.
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