Numbers

It started with the number one
When I was very small
And had to learn the name of things
One moon one sun

Then one was not enough and so the number two
The binary of good and bad
Young and old
Me and you

From there it was the digits counted carefully on each inky hand
The magic of the ten
A decimal abstraction
A gateway to a numerate land

And when I couldn’t sleep I’d try to count ten tens, a hundred, a ton
Each soporific verse that ended in the nine
A prayer for some sleep
Until the sandman’s work was finally done

One thousand’s not so big on Narbonne plage when counted out in grains of sand
But a thousand churches
A thousand symphonies
A thousand lifetimes, that perhaps is something rather grand

A thousand thousands and you’re a millionaire
Counted dawn to dusk at sixty beats per minute
Would take three weeks or more
A common number now, waved into existence a faded star, it’s lost it’s flair.

And now we glibly talk of billions like they’re commonplace
More than half a lifetime’s counting
And so we never bother but rather
Take on trust such numbers for the universe is big, we have the space.

But why stop there when we have the power of the ten to stack
The crazy scintillating names that we adorn such numbers
Belie increasing imprecision
Almost an accounting trick a number hack.

For after all when all is said and done
All the numbers ever thought of are always divisible by one