The Gift of Old Food – A poem for Parsha Behar-Bechukotai

You will eat very old [produce], and you will clear out the old from before the new. ~ Leviticus 26:10

The other day my wife who is cuter than a pomegranate
paused from making soup to clean out the refrigerator.

Much was discovered during her excavations and
questions were asked such as are you still eating cheese?

Things get old in the fridge if they’re not attended to.
I’ve seen leftovers become sentient and threaten

new loaves of bread. Throwing away food that has
become old rubs against all of our sensibilities.

What a waste…of the time we spent preparing it,
of the money we spent to buy it. What about the people

who don’t have the luxury of throwing away food?
What must they think? It says in the Torah we must

eat the very old fruit before the new. And if we don’t
along with a very long list of obligations, the most

terrible things will happen to us – Shock, disease,
hopeless longing. Someone will bake ten loaves

of bread and all of that won’t be enough to
satisfy our hunger. I remember the first time I was

at a buffet in Las Vegas. A sign said Take all you want
but eat all you take. Little did I know I was studying Torah

right there in the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino.
Every time I go to the market, I count my blessings

I can put whatever I want in the basket. It wasn’t always
this way for me. I feel my wife’s pain when she

bemoans the old cheese. I feel her frustration when
the waste basket fills up with whatever we didn’t eat.

The key word there is waste. Head to your fridge now.
Put whatever you find there in your mouth.

Try not to be a glutton about it.
These are the gifts of your happenstance.

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.