Take It Easy – A poem for Parsha Parsha Emor

And any person who performs any work on that very day
I will destroy that person from amidst its people.
-Leviticus 23:30

Almost all the things I do which
help keep cat food in the bowls,

human food on the tables
and the homeowners’ association

generally happy with my existence
are things I do for fellow Red Sea Pedestrians.

One of the great benefits of doing so is
we get a lot of holidays. There’s one every week!

Not to mention the special ones, sometimes
eight days long, which come every month or so.

And we are not supposed to work on these
holy days. The consequences of

ignoring that protocol are, potentially
the last thing we’ll experience.

So when a co-worker, more than occasionally
sends me a work email, sometime between

the lighting of the candles on Friday, and the
appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday

I fear for their very lives. Like a sensible Jew
I won’t answer until Monday. That’s what

our ancient text told me to do. It’s a gift,
really, this time off. This chance to know

the difference between the mundane
and the holy. This self-care, built in to our DNA,

mandating we just turn it off.
(without actually operating the switches.)

Let there be this separation.
Your very life depends on it.

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.