A Self-Made Cloud of Smoke – A poem for Parsha Vayeitzei

Reuben went in the days of the wheat harvest,
and he found dudaim in the field and
brought them to Leah, his mother
-Genesis 30:14

I recently stood up for my mother
who left the earth two handfuls of years ago.
She is with flowers now, in the Earth.

I brought her flowers when she
breathed the air of her neighbors.
You had to open her front door

to get the good air in. Most of her life
she spent removing oxygen from
her immediate surroundings.

We tried to make deals with her
like two wives sharing one husband
arguing over whose turn it was.

It led to her spending her life
in the smallest room with a cat
whose eyes were broken.

If you tried to tell her facts
her capacity for language would diminish.
She would change subjects like

she’d been practicing her whole life.
Her whole life waiting for the Tsar
to call with her money.

Her whole life much shorter than
anyone would have preferred.
Her whole life in a cloud of smoke

suffocating the flowers
leaving us to stand up
and say her name.

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.