Where forests stood, we raised our steel instead,
And fed the furnaces with ancient dead.
We burned a million years to feed the fire
And named the rising smoke our own empire.

We stood like gods atop the world we’d claimed
While glaciers cracked and forests died unnamed.
The warnings came; we drowned them out with trade
And sold tomorrow for the deals we made.

We broke the mountains open for their ore
And left them gutted, hollow to the core.
The tides returned our plastic to the shore,
Bleached coral paved the ashen ocean floor.

The rivers thickened, poisoned vein by vein,
The harvests blackened under acid rain.
What evolution built across the ages
We struck from life like words from burning pages.

The few grew fat on what the many lost,
And never paused to calculate the cost.
Their towers climbed as water tables fell—
They built their heaven on the road to hell.

The towers leaned like drunks against the sky,
Too tired to stand, too stubborn yet to die.
Where traffic screamed, green fingers split the stone—
The wind moved through the ruins we had sown.

And still she stirs, life pushing through the scars,
Green tendrils breaching rusted iron bars.
She will not mourn the ones who would not bend—
We lit the fire and authored our own end.

A footnote in the earth’s long-written tome:
A species rose, then burned its only home.
The stars won’t mourn, the galaxies won’t care—
We flared and vanished into thinning air.

Authors Note: Revised 12/29/2025