by Gabriel Taylor
Extinction Six
Seeded, sprouted, bloomed and withered,
Birthed, thrived, spawned and died,
Sparked, burned, fade to embers,
Ashes in the air, blacken out the sky
Seeded, sprouted, bloomed and withered,
Birthed, thrived, spawned and died,
Sparked, burned, fade to embers,
Ashes in the wind scatter far and wide.
The first mass extinction
The End Ordovician
Freezing marine regression
A Silurian transition
The second mass extinction
Late Devonian anoxia
From Gondwana to Laurussia
To Alleghenian Appalachia
The third mass extinction
Permian-Triassic devastation
Of Great Dying distinction
Ninety-six percent elimination
The fourth mass extinction
Bids farewell Triassic
With a Conodont excision
That ushers in Jurassic
The fifth mass extinction
Brings an era to an end
With an impact and ignition
From which we all descend
The sixth mass extinction
Manufactured by humankind
Who consumed and fumed emissions
Despite their knowing minds
Permian-Triassic
Seeded, sprouted, bloomed and withered,
Birthed, thrived, spawned and died,
Sparked, burned, fade to embers,
Ashes in the air, blacken out the sky
Seeded, sprouted, bloomed and withered,
Birthed, thrived, spawned and died,
Sparked, burned, fade to embers,
Ashes in the wind scatter far and wide.
The last tree desiccates,
And it crashes to the ground.
Without a witness there to hear its fate,
The vibration makes no sound.
Civilization comes to ruin,
And if no one survives to care,
It slips into oblivion,
And time continues unaware.
The Holocene extinction:
Extraction and pollution,
Ten thousand times the background rate,
Outpacing evolution.
Even with the capacity,
To forestall their own demise,
With audacity and with voracity,
Extinction six burned before their eyes.
Seeded, sprouted, bloomed and withered,
Birthed, thrived, spawned and died,
Sparked, burned, fade to embers,
Ashes overlain and ashes underlie
Seeded, sprouted, bloomed and withered,
Birthed, thrived, spawned and died,
Sparked, burned, fade to embers,
Ashes to ashes, by and by.
