Today I am one hundred and twenty years old.
I can no longer go or come
It’s a shame for Moses as a lot of
what he did was come and go.
I’m nowhere near half his age
which is a lie I tell myself as
I’ll be there in the blink of
a child’s eye. And that’s just
to the halfway mark. I could dream
of being one hundred and twenty
but every ancestor I’ve ever had
scarcely saw a 9 in front of their
final tally. This may also be a lie
as the information I have about
who they were, and where they
came and went is hidden in
the mouths of people who
already went.
My father is getting there.
But even he who could lift
the world with only one of his arms
isn’t so interested in crossing rivers.
It’s a shame for Moses who came
and went for a hundred and
twenty years, and now has only
one place left to go.
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 23 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 “Hunka Hunka Howdee!” (Poems written in Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville – Ain’t Got No Press, May 2019) and edited the anthologies “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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