In the years to come
when we look back
and think about the things we thought
in the history that is today
when our empathy has grown
and our religion becomes some smart sort of humanism
that includes all creatures,
what will we make
of the slaves we made of our four-legged friends
and the regular meals we made
of their four-legged friends?
What will explain away the pesticides
and the hunting
and the neutering?
How will we justify
our lack of consideration
of others?

What will we say
of the carnage in our forests
and the desolation of our seas
and the wide and fevered expansion
of deserts throughout the world?
How will we define the thinking
that went into our speedy depletion
of the resources we most treasured?

What will we believe of commerce
which existed to improve lives
but, when failing to,
remained our system of choice
for far too many centuries?

When we look back on the now
when we are wiser
and know better
than the stupid folk of today,
will we be ashamed
or will we be blind to new errors
we are, at the moment,
still too ignorant to make?