Moses obeyed his father in law,
and he did all that he said.
Exodus 18:24
When I first met my father-in-law
naturally, he was suspicious.
Who was this man, who was not him?
Who had not supplied his daughter
with a lifetime of foreign dolls
or a baby grand piano, or music lessons
or decades of food and shelter?
Who had flown across the country
to meet him purporting to be
someone worthy of providing
his little girl with anything?
It took a while to build trust
especially when I came off with
the confidence of Gunga Din
who I later found out was a
fictional character, thus matching
the legitimacy of my confidence.
I was so sure how all that I was
it took years before I saw
the immensity of the empire he had built.
Built with the long-haul in mind
Built with a foundation so solid
he could lose a job and still
buy you dinner for a year.
He’s taken care of generations
of people in every direction
without breaking a sweat.
The intricacies of his structure
are what inspires me to
create the same for his daughter
and grandson. I may never
be able to feign an interest in golf
but I follow his lead like Moses
followed Jethro. Putting all the
pieces in place so everyone
connected has what we need.
Moses obeyed his father-in-law
and did all that he said.
We should all be so lucky
to have a Jethro
or a Bernie.
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 25 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.
