I woke to the music of your coffee spoon on ceramic
stirring the last of the wildflower honey into a cup.
But with a click, morning news began to pour heavy
into the bedroom, the anchor’s voices too measured
& smooth for the tangled math of troop build-ups,
Senate votes & death tolls they kept listing endlessly.

Forgive me, distant wars, local mothers & fathers,
but I could not listen or embed myself. Instead, I
sneaked out the back door down to the boardwalk
& picked hyacinths on fire & violet in rising light.
I placed them in last night’s water glass as if this
one act could save a life or suddenly erase reports

of whole colonies of bees lost on the wrong roads
between phone signals. If apocalypse ever shows up,
I thought, let us then eat ashen bread & tubers.
Because I refused to watch another second tick by
wasted while you were waiting for me at the table
with dishes of fresh blueberries buried in cream,

I flipped off the TV, threw open all the windows
& focused only on feeling the familiar, salted breeze
filtering lazily in from Humboldt Bay & trembling
the petals of the hyacinths I held out to you until
their pollen scattered golden before us, this dust
filling the air we are all still breathing together.