ERIN LAMBERT

On Faith

I see now that faith was never the point but only
those failed in faith are fit to speak of it.

He remained at my window, humbled by himself;
a wasp with torn wings clasping the sill's crumbled mortar.

I assumed he'd come to die and decided I would let him.

Each day he turned more from a monk in tattered robes
to a god performing penance for razor mouth and venomous body
though all gods are killers without fault.

For weeks he remained without food or companion so I kept the glass
between us finally to confess: my faith broke with winter; stands now
as a tree, black lines and leafless, a likeness of itself.

Naturally I was devastated by the nest forming beneath him
and watched a good hour as his building betrayed me,
then I doused him to the ground with a pan of dishwater.

Damn you!

But I wanted to say: the harvest of a sparrow's nest,
the wind without the leaf; that I believed, almost.