Rules and When Not to Follow Them – A poem for Parsha Shemini

…And Aaron spoke to Moses…Moses heard [this], and it pleased him
-Leviticus 10:19 and 10:20

Once upon a time in a school
where a poet’s fourteen year old
commingled with similarly aged
patrons of the earth

a self proclaimed Rabbi of
American History took five
hard earned points away
from the boy

for no good reason.

The boy spoke up.
He gave his reasons, and
the self-appointed Rashi of
Civil War knowledge, acknowledged
and the points were restored.

This made all the difference.

It was like when the sons of Aaron
ate their meat in the wrong place
at the wrong time, catching Moses’ eye –
Moses, who knew all the rules about
where you could do such things.

Aaron spoke up for his boys.

Aaron did most of the talking
back then, and all the words he said
landed in Moses’ ears like honey.
And he said honey (maybe that’s
what they called each other back then)

I see there are other ways.

And it was all good.
Never follow the rules blindly
and if you know something is right
speak up about it. We are all
accountable for each other.

These words, just an outline.

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.