What does it matter if you have not visited your life
in so long?
Go to it now.
You have lain, too long, in a house of shadows.
You have touched your face,
in the cracked glass, like a stranger.
You have listened
to the dark wind
of this land.
Go, now.
It is not too late
to enter.
Listen, they are still here,
the wild things.
Listen. Listen. Listen.
Through the moon, through the moon’s
spruce, they have come to you:
the spring mares
in no one’s care, no master,
to bury their breath
in your fingers.
Absence, absence
crafts us
like the tender heft of a saddle-maker’s hands.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 5.
Joseph Fasano is the author of the novel The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the “20 Best Small Press Books of 2020” by Maudlin House. His books of poetry are Fugue for Other Hands (2013), Inheritance (2014), Vincent (2015) and The Crossing (2018), all from Cider Press Review. His honors include the Rattle Poetry Prize and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year.” His work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, Boston Review, Missouri Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The American Poetry Journal, American Poets, Verse Daily, the PEN Poetry Series, Measure, and the Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day series, among other publications. He is the Founder of the Poem for You Series, and he teaches at Manhattanville College and Columbia University. More information can be found at josephfasano.net.
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