The Work

The Work takes notice of you
only insofar as you affect it –
health and mood must hit sufficient pitch
for it to go about the enterprise of dealing
with its germinating itch: although
you do not have to be awake for it:
it sorts through your unconscious
waverings, your somnolent

half-hollow dreams for what might be
its best negotiable schemes – retrieving
this or that exacting insight, pulsing color,
scent, arousal to effect theatrical
espousal of regret or celebration,
confession of defeat or prideful
hot assertion: it investigates all traces
of the grace of your erotic yearnings –

any dregs of desolate desertion –
assiduously burrowing, inquisitive
about your latest least exertion and how
useful any of its consequences –:
how it kisses, kicks the heart –
might prove to the creation – wielding,
molding – of a gratifying art.
Chilling how unwilling it appears

to care about your happiness:
(all that, to it, is sentimental sappiness):
but it does care more than you know
that you find ways to counteract
all tendency to stop and foster
everything it takes to make you go.
It hopes you’ll get the hint.
You are its only instrument.

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