A Dirge For Mother Earth

This morning, I was live at the scene of another carnage. 

I stood with misty eyes,

Trying both to remember and to forget.

I tried to remember who was before the earth was confined to this wheelchair

And I tried to forget all the noise that has relocated from the now-dead streets

Into my head... Where do we go from here?

Where else can we safely call home?

For Mother Earth's now too ill

And have given us all eviction notice

'Cos she just mightn't house us all anymore...

Does she undergo ecdysis as some claim?

Is it evolution and a prelude to a fresh start-

A beautiful, stronger, new earth as others ascertain?

Is the Earth truly broken beyond repair?

Will she soonest, fall into forever's sleep as many feared?

Yesterday the statistics showed a hundred scores

Today the figures have tripled

We've now gone from numbering our dead

To counting those that are left.

So if my neighbor greets me 'good mourning'

I'll ask him 'how many have you got left?' 

With humanity pinned to an abrupt pause,

And hope still under quarantine,

Fathers began scrawling their wills

And every son began aborting his dreams.

Everything that once mattered, mattered no more

For the pandemic taught us that all men are equal.

They told us to prepare for death

For we all are on an endless queue evacuating the earth

They said our foes could pick anyone from anywhere on the queue

So nobody knows who is next

Well, since I haven't died before,

I'm almost convinced there could be no death worse than this.