Final Approach – A poem for Parsha Vayigash

These poems are offered free for your enjoyment. If you use them as part of an event, meeting, educational or liturgical setting, please consider tipping the author.

Share this poem:

Vayigash — And he approached

We’re approaching something
but I don’t know what.

The apex of my patience.
Final approach into the southland.

An end or a beginning.
Both could be bad. (Or Good.)

We’re approaching our final destination
our freeway exit. (no offense, highway people)

Here comes our long-lost brother.
Here come tax breaks for the rich.

Here comes a new year. They come
and go so quick. How many of these

do we have left? I’m approaching
that point in my life when final arrangements

are so much closer than let’s see
what this is all about.

Every photo of me looks like
a slightly younger version of

my eighty-seven-year-old father.
(To be fair, he doesn’t look

a day over seventy-five.)
I hope he lives forever

I hope I live forever.
We’re approaching a science which

may allow us to live forever.
I’m going to need more clothes for that.

I hope the interest rates hold steady.
I hope they fix the temperature.

We’re approaching a point where
I’ll tell them I paid off my house

a hundred years ago. I know
exactly what we’re approaching.

These poems are offered free for your enjoyment. If you use them as part of an event, meeting, educational or liturgical setting, please consider tipping the author.

Share this poem: