Million Million Fifty Four

Here’s a planet with
at least a million million
small Gods.  

New heartbeat begins in
a village in Bolivia;

now, estimate is a million million
and one.  

Not every inhabitant 
has a small God in attendance;
some just echo others.  Some
believe in none.  All are here together,
many thrive
and many starve
regardless of belief —

a thick strangler tree breaks through
the layers of a rain forest floor:
a million million two.  A rock, smoking 
on a Hawaii lava flow: four more, though
I don’t know how that’s possible —
I know only what we can see and I clearly see
the birth of four more Gods from the cleft
of a rock in Hawaii.

One species here kills each other often
arguing about God and associated artifacts.
They’ve gotten so much wrong about those things,
and about holy places which care not at all
about how they are honored
or even if they are honored at all.

A million million and forty-three.
They will never get their heads around that number
in a thousand thousand lifetimes — 

a million million fifty four.
It’s going to be the death of them all —

million million
sixty-eight.