Throwing Stones – A poem for Ki Tisa

And the Lord said to Moses: “Hew for yourself two stone tablets like the first ones. And I will inscribe upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
-Exodus 34:1

Like the first ones

This isn’t Moses’ first rodeo.
He’s been up the mountain.

His hands still chafed from
the hewing of the first stones.

Whose punishment is this
that he has to do it again?

The builders of the calf or
the one who threw the stones?

the words that were on the first tablets

What happened to the rubble?
The broken stone shards.

The pieces of the first set
of ten commandments.

The original artifact.
Did they gather them like

pieces of the Berlin Wall?
Did they skip them

across the Dead Sea?
How many of today’s feet

have unknowingly kicked
a piece across the desert?

the first tablets, which you broke

This is how parents speak.
Reminding children of their sin

driving it home as only words can
as the punishment is doled out.

It’s more for us than for them.
They know what they did.

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.