Unspecified Earth Problems

by Jordan Sung, 11

A thousand years from now 

when the ocean is filled with jellyfish

Or maybe it is a desert

And some alien archaeologist wonders, 

Was there intelligent life here?

Maybe he’ll dig and find 

our plastic trash melted into our geology

The turquoise fishing nets that melted in the sun

And lay down with the rocks

Our tennis balls that took 400 years to decompose

Now spotting this rock layer green

The alien archaeologist flies his science lab to what was once a beach

Now a wasteland

He finds the carcass of a whale vomiting trash from his jaws

What a last meal, he thinks

From outer space, the alien archaeologist had seen

A strange mountain in what was once Chile’s Atacama Desert

And when he landed, he found the mountains were made of clothes

Many still with their price tags on–unworn and unsold

The alien archaeologist feels sad, thinking, 

Their trash lasted longer than they did

I’ve gotta tell my people

If only we had had the courage to use 

mushroom packaging instead of styrofoam

Paper instead of plastic

And eaten more crickets instead of cows

Perhaps we wouldn’t have ended up being

A story in an alien fable