The saddest word of all
describes the final
living member
of a species.
This terrible little
word
we invented to
remember
the living dead;
the creature whose
future
is to be forever
lonely,
and nothing else.
The saddest word of
all
we created, because
we created
the endling.
Do you think they
know
that it's goodnight when they die?
There's no peers
and no elders to
lean on
when life becomes a
messy danger?
Do they fear it?
Millions –
trillions of years. Aeons
made the animal
beautifully suited
to their place
to their space, to
their species.
In a world that
humans have spent a century
gleefully wrecking
in the name of
expansion. The irony
is as cutting as the
obnoxious moniker
is misnamed:
‘growth’.
Humans can do
anything
and meld the world
to our needs
crazy quick;
no other life on
this planet
can even hope to
keep pace
with the rampage.
But we explode
things and dig holes and build
such shrines to the
power of money:
at what cost?
What a world where
such an idea exists.
Where our guilt
preys on our minds
(as it should),
but all we are
capable of doing
to assuage that
nagging brain
is to coin new words.
So we write these
poems about them,
mannered stanzas which weep drear, for endlings
make us sad.
