Dead species walking

Like the dinosaur glancing at the streak in the sky
there are men today who do not yet know
that they are fallen men.
Some still alive were raised in school to learn
to hide under their wooden desks when the flash
of a nuclear storm brightened their day.
Younger ones sense their malais and repeat the mantra question
'what can you do?'.

In the homes of the brave live people who will fight until the end for life in all its forms.
They will show a better way, a saner way to say no
to the cheaper shortcut, the profitable path to prosperity.

In smart homes people plan to invent their way up
and out of catastrophe.
But Earth will prove too large and slow for their inventions to work.

In fearful homes are those who will protect there young from the truth.
There are others who arm their children with the truth.
Mostly there those who do not know because they avoid the subject.
I foolishly wonder
What if?
What if our national song had been America the Beautiful
instead of bombs bursting and the rockets red glare?
What if an enlightened person had inherited the oil industry?
What if the right and left minds of man
understood the middle path of compromise.

I could cry for the last tiny tree frog alive.
Some laugh or scoff that one less snail darter has perished.
They can't see beyond the glory of a predator's victory.
Beyond that victory is the same event horizon hurtling toward every living thing on Earth.

I am comforted that life elsewhere has a greater understanding of
what is really profitable. A race smart enough to know what the
Native Americans on Earth knew.

That is until they built that Interstellar Casino.