rooting through palm fronds
by the shores of the Bering Sea.
Balmy air will soften the Arctic night
as glaciers of Greenland melt into sea
and tundra crumbles to methane and mud.
This is a world devoid of puffins
where phantom bears hunt vanished ice
and ghosts of narwhal haunt the coast.
The land is a banquet for buzzards and blowflies.
Abandoned cities are concrete reefs
where starfish sift through barnacled ruins.
Out past the algal-clouded lagoons,
past bleached coral coated with slime,
plastic islands choke the ocean.
Gaia swoons. Her fever peaks.
Her skin is cracked with asphalt scabs,
her veins convulsed with biocides.
Extinction sweeps the earth again
on the cutting edge of the Anthropocene.
Beyond the bottleneck, coming soon –
the Kingdom of Jellyfish,
the Realm of the Cockroach,
the Golden Age of Fungi.
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| Image by Andreas Weith - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 |
