Open Mouths in the Wilderness – A poem for Parsha Bamidbar

Count the children of Levi according to their fathers’ house according to their families. 
Count all males from the age of one month and upward.
~Numbers 3:15

The children of Lupert, according to their father’s house
(and honestly, their mother’s too, because we wouldn’t
dare leave her out) amount to a tally of one.

Children are expensive and we no longer have to
create a civilization in the desert so it felt like enough.
Their (or really his as we’re not trying to make any

statement here) name is Yehudah. He is not the
first of his name which is our way to tip our hat to
every single person who came before, all the way

back to the mountain. (Maybe even all the way back
to the open tent. Maybe further, check for leaves from
the garden in your sandals. You may be involved.)

We camp to the North (or the very very far west
if you use the original starting point as your reference.)
There are mountains nearby which remind us of

how it used to be, and it’s a short drive to where there
are buildings which remind us of how it is now.
We are charged with singing the songs.

Most of what we do, between finding, preparing,
and eating food (and the more than occasional
television program) is seeking out the songs,

learning the songs, practicing the songs. Then
singing the songs in a manner which, we hope,
shows that you should be singing them too.

It’s our favorite thing to stop singing the songs
only to find our ears filled with your voices
because you haven’t stopped.

This is the responsibility that was given to us
in the wilderness, when we began counting,
when we first opened our mouths.

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.