The house wren has built a pirate ship.
It sits in the dry dock of an abandoned hive;
the closest wave is a brush of hail.
Tiny realm, miniature fortress,
it has netted swashbuckling and swaggering
with its fledgling skulls, its hairpin crossbones. Death, it says. Don’t come near, it says. Meet your maker.
Yet life forms within its inner cup
lined with soft bark, with wool and fine grasses.
Leave those pins and rusty nails to the outer casing,
I want to rest right here.