Sing it to us Mo! — A Poem for Torah portion Ha’azinu

Remember the days of old; reflect
upon 
the years of [other] generations

I’m as nostalgic as they come.
I remember walking around my high school
during the first week of my senior year
the entire year in front of me, thinking
this is all going to end.

I’m so nostalgic. I get teary-eyed
about things that haven’t happened yet.
This is the curse of the poet –
forever removed from actual experiences
as we’re too busy assessing them.

But perhaps this wasn’t the case with
those of us across the river from the
promised land. We’d been looking forward
for forty years and we already want to be
on the other side, drying our feet off

Our sights were set on the battles ahead
the buildings to be built, the seeds we’d
need to put in the ground. We’d practically
already named our future children
hardly a brain cell left to remember Egypt

the lessons of the rock, and the fire that
moved us from place to place.
Sing us of our history, Oh Moses.
I, personally, don’t need the reminder as
I’m already weeping about my wet feet.

I’ve been dreaming of dipping my toes
in the river of our freedom. But I’ll never
forget how I got here. Praises will be sung.
Holidays invented, festive meals galore.
The past isn’t even the past, they’ll say one day.

I’m choking up thinking about it.

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 “The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express” (Poems written in Japan – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2020) 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.