by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
While humans wouldn’t necessarily suffocate (most oxygen comes
from marine phytoplankton), surviving a completely deforested world
would be biologically impossible for our species due to
cascading environmental failures.
–from an AI Overview on Google
Beyond oceans, the forests
are the only archives
that will ever matter for us,
trees powerful as poems
breathing, generating oxygen,
filling libraries of life,
old generations, new branches
enhancing books, genomes,
perpetual possibilities,
prolific, until one profoundly
petulant species terraforms
over a fertile service, Earth’s
living memory. Even Artificial
Intelligence knows how much
humans depend on forests,
atmosphere, a divine balance
of elements, the original
creation or chance phenomenon.
Either way, how ironically sad
that even silicon-based entities
know more about what keeps
carbon-based life forms alive
than our kind seems to.
Will they keep records after
their creators are gone
from repurposed Paradise?
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb is the author of the chapbook Shapes That Stay (Kelsay Books). Her poetry has appeared in Slipstream Magazine, New York Quarterly, Camas: The Nature of the West, Doubleback Review, About Place Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, and many other publications. She lives in the Central Highlands of Arizona.