I am just human scaled,
in a world that has become too big to hold.
Here, this morning, a bird calls out to me,
I look up and see an eastern bluebird
alit on the fence. Its song is startling
in the silence, as it has something urgent to convey.
I cannot parse the rising and falling melody,
but I know it speaks to me, or perhaps of me.
There are others darting behind it. Four, maybe five.
I feel invited to expand my view to consider them all.
They are involved in some sort of work or play,
but they are marking the landscape of the hayfield as if
foghorns in the mist; they whirl and dart expertly
around cathedrals rising as trees and rocks now ballast.
The world clamors for my attention from all sides
of the globe; disasters unfolding like popups on a book
from which we cannot simply turn the page.
The suffering is wide and loud and connected
with threads to everything we touch: my morning coffee
afire and served with ash from the Amazon burning.
Yet I am human-scaled
in a world that has become too big to hold.