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.



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

About 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, Mass.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Rebecca Okrent. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate