Eternity

One day the oil will run out
The gas will be gone
Coal will move from the black and into the red.

Engines rattle to a halt.
Turbines spool down and whine no more
Cars, trucks, forklifts, excavators, bulldozers, graders, dump trucks stop
Refineries cool and congeal
Factories issue smoke and steam no more.

Phones cease to communicate
Data becomes a trickle until the bits fade and dissolve in an entropic haze
Information, bank balances, land deeds, pensions,
Prison records, licenses photos, and memories,
Forever locked in black boxes in racks of dark rooms.

We will have squandered a legacy
All for this one bright glittering spark of ingenuity and waste.

The world shrinks, the forests return
Tribes, return to some agriculture, some hunting, some gathering,
Making more humans and killing others on a smaller scale.

And the universe will cast its cold uncaring eye past all of this and gaze again into eternity.