Disappearing Fences

INTRO:
This poem began as a simple observation: that distance changes what we see. Astronauts have a name for it, the Overview Effect, that vertiginous shift in perspective when Earth appears small and fragile against the black. But you don't need to leave the atmosphere. Seabirds see it. The passenger in the window seat sees it. Pull back far enough and the quarrel becomes two people under a roof. Pull back further and the years themselves pass judgment.

The fences disappear. They always do.

By Vincent R. Pozon

Men, when in space, after seeing
Earth fragile in an ocean
of black, return with new eyes.

Seabirds see whales tossing about,
the mute slapping of flukes,
the burst of whitewater.

Birds on telephone wires
do not scatter at the barking
of the neighborhood dogs.

Pull back, pull back to a distance
you are deaf to bickering,
to the whispering of plans.

Pull back enough and the body
wins the vote. Palsied fingers
will worry more than politics.

Pull back, and quarrels become
just people under a roof,
the door closed hard is unheard,

The angry silence across a table
is large only in a day. Pull back,
the years will not remember this.