Our planet is not like Venus, roasting in heat,
nor
like Mars, frigid and barren yet irradiated.
We
inhabit a world of life, lush, fertile, nutritive
to
our human swarm that threatens to choke itself.
Not
blessed with wing or fang or claw,
humble
Homo Sapiens made do with
hands
and brain and desperate practice.
We
became so good at killing, we rose to the top.
Now
we threaten to eliminate ourselves altogether.
Nuclear
and aerospace armaments poised at
each
others throats like so many giant daggers,
our
trigger fingers twitch and itch for payback.
The
lower species, if they have a lucid moment left,
will
perhaps laugh in their own way.
“Those
humans thought they were so mature,
so
clever, so smart, that they devised a way to
end
their species forever.”
Now
who is on top?
Nobody.