Perhaps

For today’s NaPoWriMo prompt.

Perhaps

When all is done and dusted
with the grey ash of pulverised concrete
and bone, settled in drifting dunes of death,

and the blue planet glows sickly
in the dispassionate darkness of space,
they will look from afar and turn away.

Later, long, long times, later,
when the tiny sparks of green,
cradled in pockets of earth,

perhaps with a single worm,
a centipede or two,
begin to spread,

or some bivalve in the deep
sandy mud beneath a tideless ocean,
heaves in then out and in again,

the cycles slowly turning again, with tiny
imperceptible breaths, to heal the wound,
graft the carbonised skin with balm,

they may look a second time,
look closer, probe and delve
and sift the ash to find the bones,

then turn away once more and forever,
leaving the blue planet to limp around its sun
in peace, nurturing the green of hope.