Torah poems for this week's portion, Yitro

I'm not writing weekly Torah poems this year. (Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm finding that balancing a congregational rabbinate and mothering a two-year-old is keeping me plenty busy!) But in years past I've written poems arising out of this week's Torah portion -- parashat Yitro -- and since poetry, like Torah, doesn't have an expiration date, I thought I'd point y'all to them this week.

Back in 2009 I posted The Deal (Yitro) -- which begins

Three months out
we enter the wilderness,
a new landscape of the heart...

And last year in 2011 I posted Coming Back Down, a poem which is at once about the Israelites coming down from the Sinai moment and about my own experience of "coming down" from my rabbinic smicha (ordination) and beginning to integrate it into my new rabbinic life. That poem begins

After Sinai's synaesthesia
(power surge, transmission)

our ancestors blinked and backed away
already forgetting how to read
the Name in each others' faces...

I hope that both of these poems speak to you and open up this week's Torah portion in new ways. Read the whole of each one: The Deal (Yitro) and Coming Back Down.