400 PPM

This is a poem I wrote in 2013. This month the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 426.5 ppm. I still have not stood next to, or near, a 'famous person of eminence' so far as I am aware (not very :-). It matters not, as we continue unabated to experience rarity in a form the majority of us, especially those without eminence, will likely regret.

400 ppm

In 1958 Charles Keeling

Began measuring the concentration

Of carbon dioxide in the troposphere

On the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa;

Then there was 290 parts per million,

This past week the number topped 400,

A value not seen in three million years.

Barely, I have been alive

During this entire increase,

And traveled here and there a bit,

But so far as I know

Have never been

In the same room,

Or airplane,

Or situation

As anyone of great eminence;

Yet in my wanderings,

Am still far more likely

To have been so,

Than were I a dinitrogen molecule 

In the troposphere and found myself

Next to an eminent molecule

Of carbon dioxide;

Yet our lives are lived so much in thrall

Of persona eminence

Within our anthrosphere:

On screen they make us

Laugh or cry,

Their music can touch hearts,

And untangle relationships;

They write our laws

And claim to lead us;

Control most of the wealth,

And they do love to sell us stuff;

Determine what we wear,

And how we should look.

Still, rarity is not such a singularity,

It is a whole ecosystem that a few strivers attain,

And, so influence our destiny.

Even if we have never coincided

At the same restaurant;

We breath in and breath out

The same equitable atmosphere.

The last time the number of carbon dioxide molecules

Rose from 290 to 400 parts per million it took twenty

Of my projected life times,

Or maybe longer.

Does our civilization have that long?

Or even the square root of that long?

Will eminence outlive me

Or you

Or Them?