Three Billion Years

Three seconds pass,
At rest: our human breath from ebb and flow,
In this we sense what time could be.

Three minutes trip,
From soft of bread to crisp of toast,
Our time begins its mystery.

Three hours pass,
An ample span for knowing strangers new,
Too much to be in sadness save for fostered friendship fettered few.

Three days are long,
Enough to be in love forever bound,
For loss to turn a world from bright to dark,
From peaceful place to battleground.

Three years change lives from rich to poor,
Thirty more now mother from the child of long before,
Three hundred years: our family lines grow faint,
Three thousand and the peoples of a place rise strong then fall,
Three million as our ancestor first walked this earth upright,
Three billion as the start of all,
The soup of our primordial life.