When Earth was young the pond's amniotic fluids suffused the entire planet, boiling up life from its depths. Dipped my blue/green feathered head underwater for something I could eat, but found only a question: What have you become? On the pond's dry lips, "the heaven-descended bard" will someday sing: Empty beer cans, half-eaten burgers, stale silicone chips, radioactive baby food, spent ammunition, the middens of another failed civilization. What have we become?