May I Suggest? — A poem for Torah portion Nasso

Command the children of Israel to banish
from the camp all those afflicted…
-Numbers 5:2

No one understands a quarantine
better than everyone alive today

But it’s a sensitive subject to
send people away when there are

those who have stated they’d rather
all of us be in the sea.

May I suggest a hospital tent?
May I suggest we take all the walls

and not give them back?
May I suggest we remember

the dirt was here before our buildings?
May I suggest we let the doctors

take a look before we send anyone away?
May I suggest the property laws

may be binding, but before they were
written down, our first guy

opened up his tent? May I suggest
beating hearts and hunger

take precedence over technicalities?
May I suggest tearing down

is the weapon of the one who
feels they’re owed something?

May I suggest, everyone gets to go
on the forty-year walk, and when we

get to where we’re going, we do more
than care for the trees of the people

who are already there? If you take
even one of my suggestions, we’ll

really be going somewhere and I’ll
be ready to make my offering to the One.

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.