Good Morning Tent Dwellers – a poem for Parsha Balak

How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel! ~ Numbers 24:5

When I sing these ancient words
with, sometimes, the newest melodies
I like to ask the singers, sometimes our
youngest Red Sea Pedestrians,
how many of you live in a tent?

Some young wandering whippersnappers
always raise their hands as it’s fun
to say things which, to them,
sound ridiculous, whether or not they’re true.

I tell them, back when we all lived in tents,
during our forty years of homelessness
long before the word unhoused was a thought,
these are the words we’d say to greet each other.
How goodly are your tents was the
good morning, what’s up of its day.

Not the intention of the original speaker
who came to say terrible things to us
but charged up by the glory of God
(or whatever they called it back then)
all he could say were blessings.

What if we could only say
what we should say and
not what actually comes
out of our mouths?

What rages would we prevent?
What opportunities would not have gone away
had we not said that.

It is difficult to not speak in the moment.
Rarely does a supernatural force
guide the right words from our lips.
I regret almost every verb I’ve spoken.

Take a pause. Intentionally turn your
curses into blessings. Let the good things you say
be like gardens and rivers.

Good morning, my friends.
Your apartments and condominiums are awesome.
Like aloe…like the sweetest smelling trees.

Rick Lupert, a poet, songleader and graphic designer, is the author of 28 books including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion.” Find him online at www.JewishPoetry.net