World Conservation

Suppose you held the world in your hand

and it looked like itself in miniature:

that special pattern of wet and dry.

The oceans feel to you like jelly,

an eye you could stick your thumb in.

The land is an even bigger temptation,

crusty; you wonder what’s under.

In the end you manage to resist neither:

finger the Atlantic, thumb the Pacific,

lick the ice caps and put your incisors to them,

dig up North America, South America, Africa,

Asia, Europe, Australia and some big islands.

Finally, you put it on the table and hit it with your fist.

You were drunk. 

You’re laughing.

It was only a dream.

You wake up smiling.

You’d never do that.