Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Perspective




I’ve been seeing January migrations of geese in the powder blue sky above Dublin;
those ever-shifting arrows sign-posting exotic, faraway countries are in my mind
when a full-stop moves from the text into the blank margin of the page I’m reading.

As it moves up the page, I wonder how much purpose a dot-sized creature can have;
at the top, it turns right, making for the gorge between the two pages; a dot on a mission!
Its slow progress suggests rough terrain, clints and grykes, a burren’s uneven pavements.

A newscaster’s voice cuts into the moment: 95 people massacred on a street in Kabul.
I lose sight of the full stop; I have a daughter working in Kabul. How high up, I wonder,
must one be for these atrocities to be so small that they appear insignificant.

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