Work

--Joseph Fasano

All day I’ve watched the wrens nest 

in the willows. 

Desire 

sways a life 

across its rivers 

like a lost horse dragging its saddle. 

And so? And so? 

What will they say of me 

at the end, then: 

he was lost; he sang; he tried to praise. 

The Egyptians, it is written, 

faced their judges in the underworld 

and told them everything, everything 

they weren’t. 

Hush, now. 

It is summer, lushest summer. 

Another love 

is gone again, 

another. The wren stares 

at her own nest 

in astonishment, its little cup 

of dust, of twigs, of hair. 

And the heart, the brittle gift 

we salvage? 

The work you do 

is secret, always secret. 

You scrape away, 

in darkened years 

of secret, 

every twisted thicket 

that it isn’t 

and suddenly, if roughly, 

        it is there.