Scale

 

It is mid-afternoon in Dublin;

two boys are hammering the shit out of each other;

no one else is around; they don’t know just yet,

but this is the end of their friendship.

Pull out.

At a city crossroads a motorbike slows;

five shots ring out, two pedestrians collapse,

one is dead, one will be maimed;

the motorbike is now two streets away.

Pull out.

All is suddenly people running

through the streets escaping chaos;

most don’t know what happened;

outside a bookshop bodies scattered like litter.

Pull out.

Two nations are flexing toward war;

there’s ongoing military build-up along the border,

incendiary rhetoric,

and fear is churning the insides of both sets of citizens.

Pull Out.

Europe, all of it, in one eyeful;

the sharp curve of the globe;

blue iris earth;

earth a drop of water; beautiful.

Pull out.

‘There may be intelligent life out there,’

one creature said to another,

looking beyond the moons of its planet;

‘but I doubt it.’