AT THE END OF THE DAY

One hundred years beyond the end game,
when our great cities are overgrown
with weeds, thorns, and other vegetation,
and things returned to how they were,
then wildlife will reclaim the landscape
and endangered species clamber back from the brink.
Our neat, regimented houses, offices and factories,
will disintegrate or become shelter
for bats, bears, badgers, rats, voles and foxes,
along with millions of birds, insects and reptiles.

One thousand years on,
little of what remains will be recognisable;
a concrete pile here or there,
and maybe some bleached plastic household items
washed up on a deserted beach.
Any inquisitive star traveller or alien archaeologist
may clear a patch of jungle and find the remains
of a railway station or shopping mall and wonder
what gods were worshipped here and by what strange creatures?

A little more digging and it may be realised
here was an extensive urban sprawl;
in fact, a world-wide megalopolis,
connected by a complex transport network.
But something must have gone wrong,
or why was it still not thriving?
Further investigation may detect residues
of noxious chemicals and gasses.
But, it seems, the Earth was not poisoned to death,
or blown to smithereens.

The only clue to its demise lay in the paws of skeletal remains
found in the tumble-down buildings.
Small black devices which, it appeared, were not tools or weapons,
but some form of mass communication.
Whatever data storage they once held had long since decayed and,
without written manuals or historical records,
it was hard to tell what had so mesmerised and ultimately,
transfixed these clever but doomed beings.
Then, an alien visitor, against all odds,
somehow manages to spark one gadget back into life.
For a brief second or two a screen flickers briefly with a blue symbol: F.

Oh, and a polystyrene cup, inscribed with a barely legible letter M.