The Birds at Five A.M.

The birds don't care that you're trying to sleep. They have a concert. It was scheduled before your alarm. Before your mortgage. Before the invention of the snooze button that you press like a prayer. The birds have been doing this for sixty million years. Your insomnia is not their concern. But listen— not to the noise, to the system. There's an order. The robin goes first. Always the robin. Like the friend who starts every story without checking if anyone's listening. Then the sparrow. Then the cardinal, red and loud and absolutely certain that every song is about him. They are arguing. About territory. About mates. About which branch is whose. The same things we argue about, just with better acoustics. I watched a crow once chase a hawk twice its size across an open field. Not because it could win— because the nest was behind it and some things you defend regardless of the odds. This is what birds know: sing first. Fight when necessary. Build where you can. Return to the same tree no matter how far you fly. I want to live with that clarity. Sing because it's morning. Fight because it matters. Come home because home is the branch that holds your weight even in the wind.