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 thoughts

when a full-stop moves from the text into the blank margin of the page I’m reading.

I watch it moving up the page, wondering how much purpose a dot-sized creature can have?

At the top it turns right, making for the gorge between the two pages;

its slow progress suggesting rough terrain: clints and grykes, a burren’s uneven pavements.

A newscaster’s voice cuts into the moment  ̶  95 people dead on a street in Kabul  ̶

I lose sight of the full stop;

how high up, I wonder, must one be for our atrocities to be so small that they appear insignificant.