At last the wrens have nested In the hollows of his arches, in a house that will not last

At last the wrens have nested

In the hollows

Of his arches, in a house

 

That will not last.  What’s wild

Has come to find him, and our sad,

Unhouseled father, whose hands

 

Can’t hold their labor, has hobbled to his windows

To lift his fading

Language, like silt

 

From out his rivers, like those fists

Of empty bridles, in a prayer

That he has practiced—for order,

 

For dominion, as he once kept stallions

Still.  All fall I’ve cursed the hours

Of carrying his body

 

Through these rooms

Where illness thins him, in the places

He has knelt in, where I swore

 

I never would.  But today, in bare

Exhaustion, I bowed down

By his waters, and felt a body drifting

 

Through the shadows

Of my body, through cairns 

Of ancient pyres, through the burdock’s 

 

Twisted folds.  Like the silence

After family, like the rust

Across its voices, it stooped to kiss the winter

 

Work had written

In my shoulders, it sniffed

My salted hair.  O I knew

 

It hadn’t come.  But tell me, 

Now, I whispered, between this water

And this fire, this rest

 

And worldly labor, in which way

Am I wanted, will you tell me

Where to go?  And with love, and sudden

 

Wonder, as though it had been

Waiting, the silent thing behind me whispered

No and no and no.

by Joseph Fasano