Guardrails – A poem for Parsha Yitro

Beware of ascending the mountain or touching its edge;
whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.
-Exodus 19:12

They put guardrails in in all the places
so we won’t fall off all the things.

It is our nature to go the very edge and
gaze upon the vastness.

If a place in a place has a thing with stairs
or an elevator that takes you to the highest spot

surely I will go up it. That’s just how I am.
Have you been to the Grand Canyon?

It’s got Grand in the name, so you know.
Back before guardrails were a thing

all we had were the mightiest words
to tell us how far we could go.

And if we dared to go further that would be
as far as we ever went. It was serious.

Think of the Speaker of the words as
holy guardrails. We may not see the Speaker

perhaps because of a thick smoke or fog.
Perhaps because seeing Them is more

than our fragile eyes can contain.
But our ears hear Their words and all

we can do is not touch the mountain.
What are the forbidden mountains

of the latest millennia? Are we hearing
the words that tell us to avoid them?

Are we listening and obeying
as we should?

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.