N Billion

Oh life--the sweetest joy,
the darkest curse of the living--to live and to die.
Faces we see here and there,
and most are never seen again. . .

N billion.

N billion lives, N billion stories.
Each different in innumerable ways from innumerable factors.
N billion tales, only a few told
though all be worth a telling or two.
Each bookended with the same prologue and epilogue,
each fostered by the world encompassing them.

I imagine the sagas of
those I encounter: he the hero of a hundred,
she the savior of a thousand.
They the tyrants of the age,
they the saints of our time.

N billion lives, N billion connections--
six degrees of separation
between N billion collections of atoms.
Two hundred nations, a dozen alliances,
six continents, two possible fates,
one genome, one God, one Humanity.

What would we tell visitors from a world beyond?

N billion lives, N billion kinds.
Oh, life, what are you?
Let me understand; all ask it, a few pursue it, none know it.

Life, are you just a set of mobile
atoms?

Life, are you the acid of
genetics?

Life, are you the Image of
God?

Life are you but an
accident?

Life, are you a rock gone
mad?

Life, are you mass
production?

Life, are you a computer
program?

Life, are you nothing but a
dream?

Life, are you a way for the Universe, for God, for Nature,
to know itself?

Oh, life, whatever you are,
just know that there are N billion lives,
N billion questions, N billion curious lives
who need to know;
and that alone should be reason to----