End of the Outbreak

People are so small. Stack all
Eight billion or so of us
Neatly, tightly, like cordwood,

In a forty-by-forty
Kilometer square, maybe
Just a hundred meters thick,

Gently sunk to the bottom
Of Lake Superior, and
The surface would rise a bit

But that would be it. A nice
Nutritional deposit,
A slab of future limestone.

Our effects are so outsized,
But sometimes I imagine
A switch going off in us,

The same switch that started us
Wandering through Africa,
Migratory ever since,

But all one long migration,
One massive pulse, to the moon.
Now we’re restless, refugees

Not explorers, no one new,
No first-comers on the scene.
Time to turn around, head home,

The great, mysterious plague
Of us reversing, turning
Off our machines, packing kits,

Leaving the weapons behind,
All headed to the Great Rift,
Time to fill it in again.

And then. . . . Then the Earth invents
Another form of hunger
For refuse that eats ruins.