Eruv by Rebecca Okrent

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend December 22, 2015   Eruv   Rebecca Okrent

You inhabit a district delineated for wobble-headed men and blue-                  haired women. Outside your window snow shimmers; a suet feeder hangs            from a birch waiting for a woodpecker; your darkened room’s a liquid compass                    whose needle you ride in your dreams as in your wakeful hours. No word intrudes.   We’re so far from our beginnings—yours in Ohio, mine in you—exiled from rivalries, resentments, your deforming disappointments. So easy now my hand stroking yours, simple affection carved from the side of the hulk that survived the storms.   Could you have found me easier to love if I’d been less suspicious of happiness? I envied you your easy crawl out to the buoy and back, learned the legend of you that ended as I began. Our lives are so much less than what we make of them, or the reverse, your kicking   toward weightlessness delivering you to granite carved with your name.            Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Okrent. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “An eruv is the wire boundary defining an area where Jews are permitted some of the activities forbidden outside their homes on the Sabbath. Assisted living facilities can seem a kind of eruv where none of the old rules apply and ancient arguments are ludicrous or, certainly, beside the point.” —Rebecca Okrent   Rebecca Okrent is the author of Boys of My Youth (Four Way Books, 2015). She splits her time between New York City and Wellfleet, Massachusetts.   Photo credit: Giorgia Fanelli Poetry by Okrent   Boys of My Youth (Four Way Books, 2015) "My Skeleton" by Jane Hirshfield "Blues" by Elizabeth Alexander "nocturnal heritage" by Roberto Harrison Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038