There’s Not Dry Land Enough to Bury All Human Days

How many acres
Of land do you need
To accommodate
A cemetery
Of twelve thousand graves?

Ten, at minimum,
Seventeen, at max,
One website answers,
But answers vary.
Twenty should do it.

If you dug a grave
For every lived day
Of someone who lived
Christological
Years—say 33,

Give or take a bit—
Percy Shelley, Plath,
Stephen Crane, someone
Like that—you’d end up
With twelve thousand graves

Or so. The longer
Lives need more, of course.
Not many would need
A small farm’s acres
To bury their days.