What We Count
A News Response Poem
A chalk drawing in the park written in looping white letters on the sidewalk near the swings, a sentence I could not step over. Some people are so poor all they have is money. I stood there longer than necessary. Thinking about what we count, how we count. Thinking about scale. How large is a trillion? A one followed by twelve zeros. A number so large it slips free from meaning, becomes a sound, a political talking point, a headline, a fortune. A trillion dollars stacked in one-dollar bills would rise nearly 68,000 miles, a paper tower reaching more than a quarter of the way to the moon. Laid end to end, those bills would stretch farther than the distance between Earth and the sun. Spread across the ground, they would blanket thousands of square miles, covering landscapes, fences, front porches, fields of corn, the places where ordinary lives unfold. We measure wealth by accumulation because accumulation is easy to count. Zeros line up obediently. Columns add. Balance sheets balance. But no calculator can tally a grandmother's voice on the telephone, a friend's hand on your shoulder, the dog waiting at the door, the child who still calls for advice, the neighbor who waves from the porch for no reason at all. The average human body contains approximately thirty trillion cells, a number almost as unimaginable as a trillion dollars. Tiny living things, working together to keep a heart beating. Perhaps wealth is not what we own, but what sustains us. Not what we control, but what connects us. The chalk will disappear with the next hard rain. The sidewalk will return to ordinary concrete. But the question remains, quiet as dust, when we reach the end of our counting, what will be left that cannot be measured?
From today’s New York Times: Elon Musk Becomes the World’s First Trillionaire
With SpaceX shares soaring 20 percent on their first day of trading, the world’s richest person crossed another milestone — one with 13 digits.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/12/briefing/elon-musk-spacex-us-iran-deal.html
“BEST SELLER” POETRY BOOK ANNOUNCMENT! My new poetry collection, You Were Never Lost: Poems from the Tallgrass Prairie, was recently released and is now officially a best seller in the “Death/Grief/Loss” poetry category. What a shock and wonderful surprise. I appreciate so many emails sharing that poems have spoken to you!
MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR AMES, IOWA EVENT: More to come, but KHOI and Ames Writers Writers Collective will be hosting a book launch event in Ames on July 9, at KHOI. It will be a late afternoon reception, program and reading. The program will feature Veronica Lorson Fowler, a well known, Ames-based editor, writer and Master Gardener who is the author of several books and has more than 40 years' experience in publishing and gardening. Thanks to Ana McCracken and Lynne Carey for organizing this and to Veronica for moderating. Details to come.
WHERE TO GET THE BOOK: The book is available locally through Beaverdale Booksand through major online booksellers, including Amazon and Goodreads.
REVIEWS REQUESTED! And if you do read it, one of the kindest things you can do for an independent author is leave a short review on Amazon or Goodreads. To leave a review, simply go to the book’s page on Amazon or Goodreads, click on “Write a Review” or “Rate and Review,” and share a few sentences about what resonated with you. It does not need to be long or formal. Even a few sentences helps other readers discover the book.
If the trillion isn’t used to help sustain others it will remain a trillion. 😢
Not what we control, but what connects us! 🫶