Here's one that's rhymed and metrical, but awfully crowded - possibly too ponderous. I've never found a home for it.
Hexagram
“An eruv is a bounded space within which Jews who adhere to traditional religious law can "carry" objects in public spaces on the Sabbath...Its boundary is a real physical entity… walls, trees, telephone wires... lengths of twine.” (The Community Eruv)
Among the ultra-Orthodox, the eruv line
defines a circumscribed community; confined
by fences, walls, and twisted lengths of plastic twine.
Here, the certitudes of God, of man and mind,
swirl and spin about each other in a ring
of tightly argued logic; here, wise scholars string
out meditations on the nature of each string
that dangles from the tzitzit: kabalistic line
of calculations follows line until the ring
of elders chanting evening prayers will fail to find
its place or peace. And here, though none have undermined
the Sabbath laws, the laws themselves may now entwine
with logic that extends all boundaries; lets twine
assign what man designs. But Saturdays, the string
bikinis shining by the green-blue sea remind
observant boardwalk walkers that the eruv line
that runs along Miami Beach is less defined,
more serpentine; that here a woman’s diamond ring
may navigate her waist and hips, that cell phones ring
on Shabos, almost-naked joggers sweat white wine.
Among the skull caps, curls and caftans, unrefined
turistas slouch: Brazilians, Russians, gangsters. String-
thin, vaguely Asian models navigate their in-line
skates past beaver-hatted dandies; none pay mind
to women who, in sheitels and Versace, mind
long ranks of strollers. Further south, the nipple ring
personifies the Beach. The smoke, the toke, the line
of coke, the all-night clubs where genders intertwine
in every combination: now a gleaming string
of dancers roams the floor, and calls, and seeks to find
more partners – in the eruv! – purpose undefined,
but none here come here with Kabala on their mind.
Yet, the scene is like those paintings where a string
of pious sages levitates to form a ring
around the moon. Freed from their cage of bits of twine,
they soar as eagles, far above the earth-bound line.
Will mankind find a resurrected ancient ring,
where zealots, drunk on God and mind, can intertwine
inside the eruv? Or is it all a line of string?
[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited May 01, 2008).]
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