The World

The world wakes up a thousand ways at once

a fisherman in Penang hauling in his nets,

a baker in Lyon pulling bread from the dark,

a child in Nairobi lacing up her shoes.

We share one sun that doesn't know our names,

one moon that pulls the oceans without asking,

one sky that holds the smoke of every city,

the prayers of every rooftop, every field.

And still we draw our lines across the earth

as if the rivers care which side they're on,

as if the mountains ever stopped to check

what flag was planted at their feet.

We are a strange and restless kind of creature

capable of war, of art, of holding

a stranger's child above the flood,

of burning what we swore we'd always keep.

The world is very old and very patient.

It has watched empires rise and go to dust,

has felt the weight of everything we've built,

and everything we couldn't bring ourselves to fix.

And yet the fisherman comes home at dusk.

The bread is shared. The child runs off to school.

The sun sets pink above a dozen nations,

and somewhere, someone stops to watch it fall.