God’s Face – A poem for Parsha Ki Tisa

You will not be able to see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.
-Exodus 33:20

What is it about God’s face
that would end it all for us
if we saw it?

And, whatever it is
has it stopped anyone
from looking?

I’ll tell you where I see It.
There is the obvious –
the faces of children

and kittens, of course,
which I only mention to
improve the metrics.

How about the rain
or, the lack of rain
if that’s your thing?

There’s a new flavor of
ice cream with pancakes in it.
I’m pretty sure God is in there.

Or at least on the face
of someone eating it.
(I may never know,

they don’t deliver it to my house.)
God’s face may be in my
Amazon deliveries.

I still remember when
getting a package was like a
treasure arriving at my house.

God’s face is in poetry.
Look at the spaces between
these lines. Do you see It?

God’s face is in the lines or
this poem that you write when
you’re finished reading mine.

Go on now.

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.