(May 2022. Sequoia National Forest. This isn’t really a poem, more like a short thought I had thinking about ecological collapse after reading The Overstory.)
If the world ends, the few who remain will be as important as everything now.
The four billion year tree of life has been logged, consumed by parasites.
The tree will topple as it has toppled five times before,
and the roaches on the fallen log will be the new roots of life.
I harbor private hopes for what I wish to survive,
but I have learned not to be too hopeful when it comes to ecocide.
Whatever lives must change.
I see three paths ahead for humans on this spaceship
who’s life support systems have been self-sabotaged.
One:
We cling to old codes and cultures,
we go down in denial,
we shrink proportionally in meanness
to the decimated world around us.
Two:
We become the godlike gardeners we often imagined ourselves,
replanting the earth’s forests and cultivating life,
unleashing ecosystems in new, artful ways,
not as owners but as facilitators,
taking on Life’s mantle of experimentation
in the endless game to increase diversity.
Three:
We die, and the planet lives on as it will.
Beatin' Paths ~~~ The journey to the Great American Novel 