A free-verse poem examining whether one death in a large population matters.

A young boy playing
in his backyard
finds a dead sparrow.
His father says,
“Since there are so many
sparrows flying around,
what does it matter?”

Driving to the store,
a teenager sees a dog
run over and killed
crossing the street.
She thinks, ‘So many
dogs are euthanized
by the local pound yearly,
what does this one
dog’s death matter?’

A tourist in Africa
watches a cheetah
chase and bring down
a Thomson’s gazelle.
His guide says,
“These gazelles are
the most plentiful
in all of Africa.
What does one’s
dying matter?”

The couch potato sees
a late-night solicitation
on TV for donations
to save a South American
child from dying
from slow starvation.
She says to her husband,
“The world is already
overpopulated. What does
a few more poverty-stricken
children dying really matter?”

With tears running down
his cheeks, the young boy
gently picks up
the dead,limp sparrow
in his backyard
and replies to his father,
“It mattered a whole lot
to this poor sparrow.”