A Priestly Blessing – A poem for Parsha Nasso

“May the Lord bless you and watch over you.
May the Lord cause His countenance to shine to you and favor you.
May the Lord raise His countenance toward you and grant you peace.”
-Numbers 6:24-26

May the Lord bless you and watch over you.

That’s all I need
the Lord, the One, the Eternal
the Nameless, or, at least,
the One with the unpronounceable Name
To monitor my comings and goings
To monitor my staying-puts
To sound the appropriate alarms when
something goes astray.
Intervention isn’t necessary.
Just a little beep to say watch out.
A holy collision warning system.
No extra charge.
It just comes with it.

May the Lord cause His countenance
to shine to you and favor you.

I need this like I need mirrors.
To make sure my hair hasn’t gone rogue.
To let me know there’s chocolate or
anything from meals gone by on my face.
Just a little word or two out of the mouths
of my closest confidants telling me
you should take care of this.
They are the light that shines on my face –
That morphs my countenance into
something acceptable.
If I have any favor left
it is from Them.

May the Lord raise His countenance
toward you and grant you peace.

It is interesting that One so high
has to raise anything to me
who exists so close to the bottom
I could write an encyclopedia about
the soles of shoes.
But peace must always be lifted.
It is the hardest work.
Imagine the muscles required
to lift peace, when so much of the world
pushes it down.
I will take peace from wherever it is given.
I see it on the Face of anyone with breath.

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.