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The Water in Your Well – A poem for Parsha Chayei Sarah

[additional-authors]
November 12, 2020

and she will say, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels

I didn’t have much growing up
but I have everything now and
I’m glad to give the excess away

I didn’t have much growing up –
No vehicle, or lunch money
No annual family vacation
No reason to go on an airplane
No family, really. If I dropped a dime
on the cafeteria floor and it rolled away
I felt that loss. I would show up to the well
with no cup. I never had a cup.

But I have everything now –
Two vehicles under the roof
I know the seats inside airplanes
like I know the back of my cat’s paw
Family in more states than I have the
time to calculate. If I drop a dime
I put it inside the Tzedakah box and
there are plenty more dimes where
that one came from. I show up to the well
prepared. I’ve got a cup with my name on it.

I’m glad to give the excess away –
I once donated an old car to the radio
I’m happy to pay for your dinner
Your concert tickets, your mail-order nuts
If you let me in, I’ll put your name on
the family tree. Whenever they say
can you help fund, I’m already mailing
them dimes before they finish their sentence.
I’m permanently perched at the well
with a water bucket. You’ll be sated before
you even know you are thirsty.


God Wrestler: a poem for every Torah Portion by Rick LupertLos 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.

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