Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I
should take the children of Israel out of Egypt?
–Exodus 3:11
We’re starting a new book today.
We’ve read it before, we already know
how it ends.
This is the one set in the narrow place.
The one about the baby, turned prince,
turned shepherd, turned reluctant hero.
How does a shepherd defeat a nation and
still get the sheep home in time for dinner?
How did I drive a stick-shift home
from Mid-Wilshire in 1987?
How did I manage to scrape a razor blade
across my face without causing permanent damage?
How did a poor child who never knew money
find himself paying a handyman to fix the sprinklers?
How does anyone born without language
eventually write a poem?
If you can put a foot in front of the other
If you can learn to eat when you’re hungry
If you can master email, text and emoji
when once these things didn’t exist
Then all you have to do is notice
when the Bush is on fire
To marvel at how it is not consumed.
If that is you
If that is your curiosity
Then you are the one who
can take us to the promised land.
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.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.