I find myself envious of extinction: <br />Snail Darters & other species hanging on the brink... <br />More envious still of those already vanish'd <br />from our corrupted & polluted plane <br />having slipp'd through some dimensional wall, <br />gone, in a blink of God's eye. <br />Those lucky beings, now fossilized remains <br />of some bygone age, elegant in their passing <br />fossil record the only trace <br />they were ever here at all. <br /> <br />Given our predilection towards folly, <br />it is utmost arrogance to assume <br />we'll endure on the path we've taken. <br />Someday other, hardier, species <br />will gaze at our remains & wonder: <br />exactly what was our place <br />on this imperfect sphere; <br />how our biology affected the ecology; <br />why was this one species banish'd; <br />how long did man hang on <br />th'evolutionary brink before <br />surrendering to th'inevitable? <br /> <br />Insect anthropologists might well conclude <br />that it was nothing other than the main: <br />that mankind orchestrated his species’ fall; <br />an act of ecological suicide due to arrogance. <br />Hives will bustle with activity (biologically determined) <br />or perhaps hive mind will have an intellectual epiphany... <br />Communicating in clicks & subsonic sounds <br />they will query their collective mind <br />to decipher messages contain'd <br />in shards of bone & ruin'd monuments <br />of our too proud species. <br />To their compound eyes <br />our wreck'd cities might seem gigantic hives <br />for our social structures would be alien to them, <br />perhaps beyond their ken, <br />& in those millions of years in between <br />our rotted flesh become a new fossil fuel <br />our bones compress'd (by geologic forces) <br />to glittering, gleaming jewels. <br /> <br />(Copyright 2/6/2006)<br /><br />Hugh Cobb<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/envious-of-extinction/
