Perspective
Lately, 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, turning right at the top, making for the gorge between the leaves; its slow progress suggesting rough terrain: a karst’s uneven pavements perhaps. What purpose, I wonder, can so small a creature have in undertaking this journey; where does the mite think it’s heading?
I might have found out, but at that moment a newscaster’s voice cut into my thoughts ̶ 95 people dead on a street in Kabul.
I lose sight of the full stop; for you are there, somewhere in that city at the height of the violence and you would not confess to us the dangers you face.
How high up, I wonder, must one be for our atrocities to be so small that they become ludicrous?
