Analyzing Human Extinction

They might have been viewed as precursors, had their line not ended quite so abruptly

Their culture could possibly have evolved into more than a simple, greedy self-destruction

Maybe their fossils would have been enshrined in chapels, museums and laboratories

Looking at their petrified remains might have even inspired great awe and wonder in little ones

Their lifestyle in an ancient era would have been a lesson to their grateful descendants

Emergence from a rough and tumble past might have resulted later, in a state of grace

Their patchwork history and tattered legends could have easily anchored great cultures

Viewed as ancestors, their violent habits would have been seen in a totally different light

They might have passed on valuable lessons from out of a vast sea of ancient experience

Perhaps distant progeny would have honored them and sought out their blessings

It might have been possible that they formed the stem of a still-flowering species tree

Their DNA could have contributed to something beyond their short, harsh and angry tale

Had their seed carried on, their venal struggles might not now appear so foolish and so vain

Were they not evolutionary dead-ends their violence and waste might possibly make sense

Without wantonly destroying their supporting environment, they could have carried on

Possibly, if they did not extinguish so many other species, they could have even loved one another

Outcomes may have differed if their myths had endowed everlasting souls to all living things

Could have survived had they not gifted themselves exclusive domain over their one planet

Maybe their self-granted commandment to be fruitful resulted in their toxic overpopulation

Certainly the warfare demanded by their many one true gods contributed to their demise

They might not have shambled off into early oblivion had they escaped their own Social Darwinism

If they could have appreciated their inheritance, they might have planned for their legacy

Perhaps not basing their economy on shortsighted greed would have led to more success

Finally taking action only after they had collapsed their ecosystem was not a viable survival strategy

Maybe not gauging their progress solely upon extractive consumption would have helped

Trusting in ponzi perpetual growth instead of steady state survival probably aided their demise

Their never-begotten offspring might not have disdained their elders as irrelevant fools

Had they the sense not to bring on a mass extinction, things might have been very different

Possibly their urge to killing did not serve them as self-appointed stewards of the earth

Maybe market solutions were not appropriate for blindly solving all of their world’s problems

Basing price on demand did not ensure the long-term availability of any of their finite resources

Placing their bloated population’s marketed needs before the one planet that sustained them failed

They might have explored the universe had they not destroyed their own spaceship earth

In the end, their perpetual and expensive warfare did not confer to them any survival advantage

If they had not always followed monomaniacal will-to-power freaks, they might still exist

But, instead, they are rightly known as the precursors of nothing and the ancestors to no living beings

Fireflies Faltered Beneath Our Progress

The tiny flickering glows of those little fireflies are winking out all over, without a sound

Their demise was briefly noted somewhere after the real news of Sports and Entertainment

Still, some ask, without the fireflies, can the fairies really be so very far behind?

Your children will not miss them but, as for us, we saw them and we actually let them go

Their merely wondrous blinking, wafting in tall meadows apparently was not enough to save them

For the spread of civilization brought our ordained progress to bear with blunt force, against them

Their bobbing in the grasses proved ineffectual against our blindly-mechanical spread

At least their demise can be euphemized as simply a sad, but unintended, collateral destruction

However, that magical fragility which had once made us skip lightly and gently sing, is gone forever

The fireflies are faltering and we lack the time or money to save them, or even to say goodbye

Yet, all those who saw them doubtlessly retained the memory for their entire lives

Unlike all the forgotten entertainment and the randomizing blur of this, our day-to-day existence

Without any time for triage their fate was quickly sealed, somewhere well off of, our social radar

Cool green lights winking out unnoticed during commercials amidst corporate sports extravaganzas

Still, their extinction may have indirectly contributed some tiny fraction to a rise in quarterly GDP

Yet all of us have been reduced by this, only marginally beneficial, god-granted taking of dominion

The faltering of the fireflies does not prove us to be simply a ruthless and destructive lot

Their small vacancy surely does not unzip the very fabric of the summer night

Certainly their tiny niches must indeed be quickly claimed by other life forms

After all, every creature comes and goes from the loving breast of this sustaining earth

Their humbly entertaining forays paled in comparison to our far weightier concerns

Like the flowers that we bulldozed, they did not produce or consume, much less reap or sow

And, as His good stewards of this entire blue-green world, we cannot be lessened by their absence

They formed, after all, but a single stitch in the densely-woven tapestry of life on earth

The unnecessary beauty and grace of the fireflies conferred them no survival advantage

Their phosphorescence really wasn’t such a magical mystery, viewed thru our earthy wisdom

We could always build robot firefly drones with LEDs and artificial swarm intelligence

Their demise then but a minor chord in the squishy symphony of fine things being crushed underfoot