Living on a Map

Look at our world from space

What is the most human place?

It isn’t China’s Great Wall

It isn’t our monumental space station,

Nor the satellite infestation

The most obvious sign of us humans

Is past the Sun but alive with lumens

Perhaps there’s a possibility

That the greatest of all our fights

Has been simply to turn on the lights

Now let’s get a closer view

Of continents we have only few

Even Antarctica is inhabited

And even as it’s getting hotter

No one’s thought to make one of water

What a continent the oceans make!

Yet death comes from thirst without slake

But pay that no mind

Do you think that nuclear is better than oil?

Do you know we use it to make water boil?

Cities are a love letter to structure

Even as they make forests rupture

What, did I skip something?

But a country is not a part of the world

It is simply a large flag unfurled

Now, let’s get to what this is really about

A map doesn’t have much clout

Just think, a whole city of moss

Wouldn’t that have a calculated beauty?

Our first breathable ingenuity?

Should we build a forest out of metal?

Or a mind out of data like a nettle?

Is it frightening that plastic is immortal?

Or maybe it would give us greater ease

If we built our world from trees?