I am this morning,
even after a night’s sleep,
as tired as a bird 
settling onto
a familiar branch
after migration. 

As we all do when we return
to a long missed home,
birds upon landing look around 
and try to determine 
how it has changed
since last season, but

nothing here looks different
than it did before I slept,
although I spent the night
filtering all I knew through 
long dreams that swooped
over seas and mountains.

It’s a disappointment to see
things have not changed,
but maybe it was a mistake
to dream as a bird,
to have believed in 
my own far sight

and long endurance. 
I’m beginning to think
it all looks the same
because I am microbial, 
was merely carried 
through my dreams by a bird, 

and am still seeing 
the same small landscape 
I was seeing when I began:
roots of feathers,
bumpy skin. Beyond them
are the same distant sea and sky

I can see wherever I am.
Thousands of miles
from where I began, yet still seeing
the same world; it’s enough
to put this germ back to sleep
and decide that there’s no point

in dreaming at all, although I’m certain
that tonight I will again
swing low over gray seas,
carried home to morning
on familiar wings
I have never truly owned.