Pondering the World Population Clock

Chris Ellery

December 3, 2023

“You know, when you question, it slows you down.”

Logan’s Run (1976)

Where would the planet be

without disasters, diseases, murders, wars

subtracting so many from the sum of homo sapiens?

As it is, the meter on the webpage of the World

Population Clock is ticking up conspicuous consumers 

like numbers on a petrol pump, 100K net gain so far today. 

Should we try to slow it down?

What if Nature for nature’s sake could suddenly require

a constant bottom line of human lives, an equilibrium—

one death in time for every birth?

How long, Sibyl-like, would you keep your thread 

uncut? Would you ever volunteer to leave your place 

for some unborn Picasso, Einstein, Saint Teresa? 

How many more catastrophes and wars  

would Mother Nature need to balance birth and death?

I saw a movie once in which no one was let to live 

past 30. I don’t recall, exactly, how many years this was 

after mad Jack Weinberg, mortified by bombs and lynchings,

said to me and my whole generation 

that no one with 31 years or more is worthy of trust. 

But I’m pretty sure that he and all 

those other Flower Power guys were in their 30s at the time

still wanting to be trusted, and Abbie Hoffman, 

who is sometimes blamed for Weinberg’s angry line, 

had renewed himself as Barry Freed and was, like Logan, 

living on the lamb. Proving what? I don’t know.

The point is in the movie no one wanted to go.

I was young, and this seemed true. Now it seems more true.

Even as I watch the meter on the webpage of the World 

Population Clock streaming humans into being

faster than the heart rate of a hummingbird.  

As I am old, a charming superfluity above three score 

and ten enjoying the pebbles and clouds, it makes me wonder.

What if a woman I love were in labor tonight 

with a baby that already has a name.

What if it was up to me to make some room for the little one? 

What if Nature for nature’s sake demanded 

such a thing, a death for every birth in time? 

Would it be wise or crazy, kind or cruel? 

Would it save the earth? 

Chris Ellery is a retired professor with lots of septuagenarian and octogenarian friends. Among his collections of poetry is Elder Tree, an extended contemplation on the 13th and final month in the Celtic calendar.