I wake to light that doesn’t ask permission,
my body’s weight still tethered to the bed,
the coffee maker’s slow, indifferent mission—
I swallow something sharp I haven’t said.

Outside, the century rehearses new disasters,
the script unchanged, the fresh hell and its dead,
the glaciers calving faster, ever faster,
while somewhere children wait for promised bread.

But look: a wren has built against the siding,
her beak a needle threading moss and string,
I stand, undone, ridiculous, abiding—
this small defiant unnecessary thing.

The sun will swell and swallow every ocean,
the continents will drift, divide, and still,
a billion years will level each devotion—
what’s one wren’s nest against that ancient chill?

A woman on the train held me in her eyes,
no reason, no request, just recognition—
then looked away. The doors slid. No goodbyes.
I carry her, a spare and silent vision.

The forests burn. The coral dies. The bees.
The billionaires build bunkers in the hills.
We numb ourselves with scrolling, by degrees,
administering our own sugar pills.

And still the wren returns. And still the morning
arrives without apology or cure.
I watch the light come in without a warning,
stubborn, broken, ordinary, pure.

So here I stand, ridiculous, still breathing,
in love with what I cannot hope to save,
the whole mess bright and terminal and seething—
my God, this ruined world. I’ll watch it to my grave.