Where else to go? We are grounded on this 4
billion-year-old ball of dust and water.
Wander aimlessly through the abyss.
We are of the earth. Grounded?
Life from the primordial ooze.
Molecule to molecule we grew.
Til we become human, and we die.
Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust.
How many of us humans have ever lived on this ground?
Population Reference Bureau postulates 117 billion. Who am I?
They say I am one of 117 billion. When I was born, according to my
becoming date,
I was the 2,946,752,787 person alive on Earth.
Surely, nothing was expected of me.
Grounded. With this knowledge, we seek meaning.
We seek the truth of our existence.
Who are we? What are these thoughts? What is a thought?
What are these words? Is poetry just a fancy, fleeting thought?
And yet, I still toil. Each day the words of my culture come to my mind,
over coffee, over breakfast, over the sound of my love.
This token-chosen language. I choose to communicate.
Successful or not, the words flow. Truth, or gibberish?
Does it matter? To whom? To what? To Toil?
G r o u n d e d. Until the last breath of this life.
Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust.
To soil.
NOTES:
How many humans have ever lived?
Population Reference Bureau
117 billion members
No demographic data exist for more than 99% of the span of human existence. Still, with some assumptions about population size throughout human history, we can get a rough idea of this number: About 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth.
On my birthday, at 1:08PM, I was the 2,946,752,787th person alive on earth.
Day 13 ,
Prompt: Write a poem that is grounded in the body (earth).
How you interpret that is up to you!
So,
interpret, I did. I write in the dark of night's peace.
