Wren

What’s the use, little one?
You daily peck the mulch
of summer’s torpor, then
carry a dead blade of grass
up to the birdhouse, where you
disappear into a black hole
the size of my thumb.

A minute later, you do it
all over again, beaking the pile
of bark and old vegetation below
to find just the perfect fragment
of ribbon, sun-dried
in the sparseness of drought.

You vanish once more
into the tiny architecture
of darkness, doing whatever
your housekeeping demands,
making a bed for your young,
who will presently hatch,
or fall, awaiting the mouth
of next door’s cat.