A Tale of Apples and Death – A poem for Parsha Breisheit

But of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat of it, for on the day that you eat thereof,
you shall surely die.

Knowing how much I know,
I wonder how it is I am still alive.

Fruit from the tree of knowledge is
literally on my dinner plate every day.
(The original sin is that no one uses
the word literally correctly.)

Further, I tempt the very life that
was breathed into my nostrils, weekdays
at one o’clock p.m. by putting an
apple on my lunch plate.

I cut it around the core into four slices,
and then toss its heart into the disposal.
Perhaps, this is how I get away with it
as knowledge grinds away and
the city takes care of it.

Sometimes the apples are mushy
and it’s more of a death than lunch.
That feels like an exaggeration but
considering what we all know

and that no-one has found the remains
of the intersection of the rivers that
flowed out of the garden, maybe
all of this is suspect.

I know as sure as bees live in
the palm trees that surround my house
that I will surely die. I hope it’s not soon,
but when it all comes down, let my
epitaph read He knew too much.

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.