The birds are singing.  Weeks too soon.

For them, is climate change a boon?

Won’t they need bugs or seeds to eat?

The ecosystems once were neat

and dovetailed nicely, well-designed.

But now look, Nature is inclined 

toward unpredictability.

What’s missing is the harmony.

Is what’s to come catastrophe?

What grief.  Unless, at last, we see

what matters.  It’s not wealth from oil,

or chemicals to bathe the soil,

or plastics, or a bunch of stuff.

Isn’t simpler good enough?

A modest life?  No life of greed

can ever give us what we need.

We need each other.  Nature, too.

As for the rest, we can eschew

the rat-race and the monkey mind.

And inward turn – and out – and find:

contentment is within our power

if we can live a little slower,

if we can slip our manic tethers

and live with glad unruffled feathers.

The birds are wise: they sweetly sing

that money isn’t everything.

Photo: A mix of birds gathered around a snow-covered bird feeder on a winter day; Martha Allen, Cornell Lab of Ornithology