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.
