THE CONUNDRUM OF PROPORTION

You try to force your arm into dolly’s dress
balance her hat like a pimple on your head,
crush her cardboard-box bed with your giant toddler
body, puzzled by further mysteries of perspective:
big or close; small or far away; the way your feelings
rear up huge as a tidal wave and threaten to drown
the world till reason is a whisper in a hurricane.
Beware adults who tell you to ‘keep it in proportion’.
They might also believe that ‘code red for humanity’
is small and far away.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2021 that the global threat level posed by climate change was “a code red for humanity”.