As We Come and Go – A poem for Parsha Beha’alotcha

[Jethro] said to him, I won’t go, for I will go to my land and my birthplace.
–Numbers 10:30

The world is a much smaller place than it used to be.
Which is, of course, not true as the world is exactly
the same size as it used to be.

It is merely our ability to traverse it and connect with
those who live in what used to be regarded as
immeasurable distances which has grown smaller.

I have close friends who I almost never see.
But hardly a second goes by that I don’t receive
an electronic update from them letting me know

all the minutiae of their comings and goings.
So when I had the opportunity to dwell in their
physical presence recently, we barely

put down our phones to hug each other before
the conversation, which had never stopped, continued.
There were obligatory hugs as we breathed the same air

and went about our days until the inevitable
airport drop-off came and off we went,
our messaging devices in hand, as if it never happened.

How lucky we are to have the technology to be so close
no matter what continent our feet are on.
Not like when Jethro said he wanted to go home

instead of off into the desert with the rest of us.
Back then, this kind of decision meant you might never
see someone again. We don’t know if he came with or went

and our sacred text doesn’t work like the Find My app.
So when someone says goodbye to you in an airport
receive it with the weight it deserves.

The pull of home is strong.
But the arms of your friends –
those will last a lifetime in the desert.

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 27 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 “The Low Country Shvitz” (Poems written in Georgia and the Carolinas – Ain’t Got No Press, May 2023) 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.