Magnifying

 At camp

At nature time

We broke out the magnifying glasses

To inspect the world

Close-up

Blades of grass like trees

Pebbles like boulders

Grains of sand like rocks

As individual as snowflakes

Curves and points in infinite variety

And ants 

Following invisible trails

Carrying burdens far too large 

For their tiny bodies to bear

Yet carrying them anyway

Rocks and leaves and bits of dropped picnics

And all working together

Driven by some invisible code 

Deep in their DNA

And I lowered the glass 

And the tiny landscape 

So detailed and textured and alive

Shrank to a patch of grass 

Easy to ignore

Or stomp on

Another camper 

Freckled and fidgety

Focused his lens

In just the right 

                        Or wrong 

                                        Way

Angled it so a ray of sun

Distilled into a beam of heat

And burned a hole in a blade of grass

And fried an ant to black ash 

As it tried to scurry along

And he thought 

What he did was awesome

And got some other campers 

To burn things 

Along with him

What do we choose to magnify

And what do we choose to burn

And why do we weaponize our lenses

For viewing the world

When we should just

Look