Are we in the Autumn of our days
will civilisation as we like to call it
fade to red and wither beneath
climate over warmed skies
when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man*
who has fouled his nest
which is the whole world
watching the world go by for lockdown hours
viewing live streams from the ISS
the Booker winning author of ‘Orbital’
reflected on our devastating impact
mostly at night the impact of man’s
expansion to every corner of the Earth
can be seen spelt out in light pollution
other damage scarcely visible from space
damage like smoke from wildfires
once natural – now stoked by climate change
more frequent hurricanes and worse…
and one-time lakes and reservoirs now dry
these things you may see from space
however pristine the planet appears
but the truth is out there
and space itself is littered with debris
a layer of debris – mainly plastic
marks the Anthropocene
and future, alien archaeologists
may label the sign of our demise as –
fouled nest syndrome…
Andrew Wilson, 2024
Last night down the dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics offers us reflection as a prompt of the photo above paired with the italicised lines marked *. The lines are taken from “[what if a much of a which of a wind]” by E. E. Cummings.