Ode to Kosher-for-Passover Pudding

Praise be to
Kosher-for-Passover pudding
in packs of four
cups stacked like cars
on a trailer.
A traffic jam of Kosher-for-
PassoverPassover is a major Jewish holiday that commemorates the Jewish people's liberation from slavery and Exodus from Egypt. Its Hebrew name is Pesakh. Its name derives from the tenth plague, in which God "passed over" the homes of the Jewish firstborn, slaying only the Egyptian firstborn. Passover is celebrated for a week, and many diaspora Jews celebrate for eight days. The holiday begins at home at a seder meal and ritual the first (and sometimes second) night. Jews tell the story of the Exodus using a text called the haggadah, and eat specific food (matzah, maror, haroset, etc). pudding cups
on a tin-foiled shelf,
behind a latch
in a room with a code –
Hamesh – Echad – Shalosh.
If you can read and
translate you can
make it inside this
Chai Lifeline safe zone
with the Haimish soda
and the mini bottled waters
labeled Mayim Chayim.
If you can crack the code
you can dip into this
oasis of muddy sweetness,
this Kosher-for-Passover pudding,
while your baby breathes
sixty-four times a minute,
while she kicks and dozes
and cries out
from her fevered body,
while you wait for the resident,
for the attending,
for the x-ray,
for the bag to fill with pee,
while you take turns
holding her between
rickety bed rails,
while the people on HGTV
find their tiny dream home,
a whole house the size
of this Chai Lifeline Pantry.
No windows,
no worries,
no regrets
for these Exodused people.
Only Kosher-for-Passover pudding.