I think again about
the number
sixty million
it is hard for me to conceptualize it
does a hillside of spring grass
even contain sixty million
individual blades?
I try something smaller
there are one hundred thousand
people in this city
and that is more
than I could ever meet or know
it’s hard for me to picture
the whole of this city’s population
all at once
so again I go smaller
my hometown
has a few thousand people
but even this is too much
my high school
had three hundred students
and I can picture us
in the auditorium
even this feels like so much life contained in one room
it is so strange
that the human mind
can’t seem to comprehend
anything beyond a few hundred
living breathing things
yet we’ve dropped bombs
that have reduced cities to ash
yet we have prompted policies
that have starved millions
yet we reduced the herd
that was the closest thing
to the owners of this landscape
to a mere twenty three
from sixty million
twenty three is a number
I can comprehend
twenty three is a number
that feels so small
sixty million
to twenty three
we may not be able
to truly understand
these numbers we discuss
but it seems easy for us
to kill in quantities
beyond which we can understand
Author’s Note: The series from which this poem is a part is titled BUFFALO ELEGIES and is a collection of twenty-three poems that reflect on the devastating impact of the near extinction of the American Buffalo during the brutal colonization of the American West.
—
Alexander Shalom Joseph is an award winning author of seven published books. He has an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English Education. Alexander lives in Colorado, writes a weekly poetry column on Substack and teaches writing workshops in libraries, schools, and prisons across the Colorado Front Range. He lives close to the Rocky Mountains, from which he draws much of the inspiration for his work.
