Round Numbers

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

 

Round Numbers

Humans are drawn to round numbers

Bicentennials and millennials

Decades and centuries

The three minute mile

Fifty ways to leave your lover

A hundred years of solitude

500 miles away from home

The first one hundred days

Top ten on the hit parade

One hundred meter dash

Ten thousand meter run

 

Two hundred thousand dead

From the novel coronavirus

Two hundred thousand humans

No longer in physical existence

Two hundred thousand mothers

Fathers sons and daughters

Uncles aunts and grandparents

Two hundred thousand doctors

Nurses farmworkers plant workers

Grocery store clerks and teachers

Two hundred thousand lovers

Loved and beloved ones

 

Are we paying attention now

Have we lost enough to care

Have we cried enough tears

Is it now too much to bear

 

Stop the destructive madness

Now that we see where it led

Toss them all overboard

Into the sea of the living dead