The Wisdom of the Cloud – A poem for Parsha Beha’alotecha

When the cloud lingered over the Mishkan for many days,
the children of Israel kept the charge of the Lord and did not travel.
-Numbers 9:19

Decisions are hard.
Take what’s for dinner for example.

If it’s just you, it’s a little easier –
You don’t have to run anything by anyone,

though you still have to decide whether
to cook, or to order, and either option

involves a whole other set of choices.
If another person is involved, and,

both of you are decide-phobic
the difficulty is compounded.

They say half of marriage is
yelling what?! from another room,

I say the other half is deciding
what’s for dinner.

The mealtime detente can
turn you both into skeletons

long before anyone comes along
to explain the Torah to you.

I’m envious of when we had a Cloud
telling us where and when to go.

If the cloud lingered, we’d stay.
If it was ready to go, trumpets would

spread the news, and we’d go.
We didn’t have to decide anything

except if we were going to do
what we were supposed to do.

All I know is I have to get from
the beginning of the day to the end.

More of the same tomorrow
and the next if I’m lucky.

I keep looking for the Cloud to know
if I’m headed in the right direction.

The clear sky is deceptively comforting.
The wisdom of the Cloud in

the eyes of my beloved.

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.