Deep Time

After 4.55 billion years, give or take 50 million,
it only took us 200 years
to bring us to the brink:
the voracious industrial maw gobbling acres
without a thought of restoration,
of what can be sustained,
or the cost to whatever future
we have left.

(Some indigenous people caution us
to step lightly, that we are walking
on the faces (and futures) 
of our children.)

The future is here, now.
We inherit melting ice, wildfires,
carbon emissions, a heating planet,
warming seas.
Refugees are on the move,
fleeing famine, flood, fire,
war and terror,
seeking safety, finding none,
borders closing, as the hope withers
in their hearts.
In the eyes of the suffering children
we see reflected
the world that we have made.

We have 100 seconds
- one minute forty seconds -
before climate catastrophe
is everywhere.
The leaders are not listening.
Dollar signs blind them
to a truth few want to hear.
Willful ignorance enables them
to fill the pockets of the few,
while the masses suffer.

Deep time is revealing its finite horizon.
The 6th mass extinction is upon us.
Some of us recognize
that this extinction
includes us.

It's a hundred seconds to midnight.
It was two and a half minutes two years ago -
anyone getting nervous yet?


for Brendan at earthweal : A Clockwork Green