The Good Old Days — A poem for Torah Portion Ha’azinu

…new things that only recently came,
which your forefathers did not fear.
-Deuteronomy 32:17

Everyone remembers what it used to be like
back when things were good and simple –
When you could send your kids out to play
and wander the neighborhood. Or perhaps
you were a kid who went out and played
and wandered the neighborhood, without fear
that anything would happen to prevent you
from coming home.

If there was any concern, we’d get on the landline
which we, like simpletons, used to call the telephone
and call the neighbor and ask for you to be returned
because it was time for dinner, or bed, or
just out of principle because it was darker
than we wanted it to be.

It’s not like that now, and back then, I assume,
it was not like it was years earlier when, no doubt,
things were even simpler.

Why, we used to live in caves and all we had to do
was feed ourselves and propagate the species.
What a simple time it was when all we had to do
was feed ourselves and propagate the species.

New dangers are always on the horizon
changing our behaviors, since they can
crash airplanes into buildings much faster
than we can put them up.

Our parents don’t understand what we’re doing
just as we don’t understand what our children are doing
and with all their right now confidence, they, someday
will be confounded by the doings of the people
they haven’t invented yet.

Just yesterday we sent our twelve year old
across the street to play tetherball
just like they did a hundred years ago.
He came back, despite the risk.

We’re holding on to the good old days
like they’re happening right now –
With every confidence that the future
is a sure thing.

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.