Snowball Earth - Dec 30 2022

 

Snowball Earth

Dec 30 2022

The Apollo 11 lander

will still be on the moon

millions of years from now,

preserved

on the constant surface

in the absence of water and air;

no erosion

no weather

no rust.

By then, Earth may well have become

either a barren toxic hot-house

shrouded in thick sulphurous clouds,

or an ice encased fortress;

but either way

we will be long gone,

not even a trace

of our civilization left.

But squatting in the lunar dust

like a headless spider

on its splayed metal legs,

this man-made object

will still impassively sit,

indifferent

to the passage of time.

I find something touching

in this long patient vigil.

The loneliness.

The constancy.

The dutiful waiting;

like a loyal retainer

who has never lost faith

and awaits its master's return.

And if aliens come exploring

they will be mystified

by the mad incongruity;

the blasted surface,

and an ancient relic

of precisely machined material

that was dropped down and left.

Garbage

and a dead planet

our only posterity.

The Atlantic science desk had an entertaining end of year piece entitled 74 Things That Blew Our Mind in 2022. When I came across # 72 — The Apollo 11 moon lander will sit on the moon for millions of years because there’s no wind or water to erode it away — this poem immediately started to write itself.

In the description of possible future Earths, the first is really a depiction of our ill-fated sister planet, Venus. And the second, which gave the poem its title, was an actual phase in the geologic/climatic history of earth.