Count Your Blessings – A poem for Parsha Beshalach

On that day the Lord saved Israel from the hand[s] of the Egyptians,
and Israel saw the Egyptians dying on the seashore.
Exodus 14:30

It is said when we arrived
at the other side of the sea

When the walls of water
closed up on the Egyptians

When we stood with dry feet
When the magnitude of that freedom

caused us to break out in song.
The enormity of this moment

spread to enemies we hadn’t met yet.
Nearby chieftains were startled.

Moabite men trembled at the news.
The Canaanites melted.

Was this a metaphor?
Was it like a fluid Terminator?

A Dali clock?
An ice cube?

Was it an Indiana Jones situation?
(or is that too on the nose?)

Some say it was like
dissolving in raindrops.

Soon after we found our feet
melting on desert sand.

Our parched lips complaining
about bitter water

with seemingly no memory
of chariot wheels and spears

floating away.

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.