Assumed Knowledge – A poem for Vayakhel-Pekudei

And the stones were for the names of the sons of Israel twelve, corresponding to their names
-Exodus 39:14

A certain number of thousands of years ago
they applied stones to a breastplate –
Four rows of three.

This artifact, the details of which were exact,
only exists in this text – The physicality of it
lost to the passage of time.

You wonder if you dug enough in exactly
the right place, would you come across it?
Finally have proof.

So much of our history exists only as
a promise that it really happened.
Like the names of the sons of Jacob –

Each one of whom gets a stone
on the breastplate. Each one a different color
This is a family who loved their many colors.

Even most of these names are lost.
Just two survived the subsequent unpleasantness.
Maybe we found a third, but who can say?

I guess we live in a time where some of us
can say for sure, and others of us wonder
what to do with knowledge that is only assumed.

I like to walk the line. Do things because
we’ve always done them, constantly remind myself
archaeology doesn’t always have my back.

I’d like to traipse through the holy land
with a shovel. Dig and believe, with the names
of my lost ancestors, I’ll find the truth.

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.