Friday, December 22, 2023

Checkout Counter

One of the older holiday recordings
Piping from a small-town grocery ceiling,
For nostalgia, the spirit of the season,
Not for mental arithmetic re lifespan.
Three-point-five billion people in the world then?
Three billion of those now dead, half a billion
Octogenarians up, seven-point-five
Living now born since and a couple billion
Born and died since? Nine or ten billion babies
Of this species in eight decades, give or take,
One of them ringing all this up in its head.

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