Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’s Ties and California Poppies

Men look better without ties

at fairs, on factory floors, in floods,

but otherwise this is unwise,

unless they want to look like studs.

Young Rabbi Sacks wore silver ties,

more dignified, he thought than yellow,

a color worn by bolder guys,

but rarely by an old frum fellow.

Orange is the lovely color

of poppies which in California

bloom nearly every year, ebullier

than Sacks’s sermons, slightly cornier.

The bloom’s ebullience is angelic

but shorter lived, alas, not timeless.

Like “orange,” there aren’t orangelic

words to stop it being rhymeless.

The California poppy which was flourishing in a superbloom while I composed this poem, was presumably one of  the plants God created on the third day described as being טוֹב, good.  Gen. 1:12-13 states:

יב  וַתּוֹצֵא הָאָרֶץ דֶּשֶׁא עֵשֶׂב מַזְרִיעַ זֶרַע, לְמִינֵהוּ, וְעֵץ עֹשֶׂה-פְּרִי אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ-בוֹ, לְמִינֵהוּ; וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים, כִּי-טוֹב.   12 And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

יג  וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם שְׁלִישִׁי.  {פ}      13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

Since plants lack free will, this description cannot have been given to them for their behavior, which leads me to suggest that whenever God declares anything other than human beings as being “good,” He must have been praising everything that He created for its beauty. This may be one reason why Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks liked to wear yellow ties, and beauty also is one reason why I love rhymes, regretting the absence of a rhyming word for “orange,” which, unlike “yellow,” has no rhyming fellow.