Steps to Freedom – A poem for Parsha Bo

…and He will see the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, and the Lord will pass over the entrance, and He will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses to smite [you]
-Exodus 12:23

Step one: learn what a lintel is.
Apologize on behalf of its more
famous cousin, the doorpost.

Step two: Find the blood you need.
It is not where you normally keep your blood.
This batch comes from a sheep.

Apologize to the sheep.
Step three: Learn what hyssop is.
I’ve covered it here before –

Long ago. Maybe you had different eyes then?
Hyssop is bushy and aromatic, like a
tea you’re going to want to keep contained.

Step three: pretend it’s just a
home improvement project as you paint the front door
with the hyssop and the blood.

Wave to your neighbors as if there
is nothing unusual about this.
Odds are your neighbors will be painting too.

Step four: Stay inside tonight. Draw the shades.
It’s going to get weird tonight and you don’t want
to see what’s going on out there.

You’ve been given the secret code,
the all access pass to live another day,
The Holy Holy is on your team tonight.

Step five: pray this does the trick.
The blood on the door isn’t going to
improve the resale value, and you’re

going to have to get out quick.

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 26 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 “I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii” (Poems written in Hawaii – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2022) 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.