Choices

When they took away our choices

and told us “sit”

the sun came out 

like it was finally safe to shine 

on the mess we’d made

Inside with hands clean 

but for a stubborn spot or two 

we took up a communal rhythm

and came together on our balconies to clap;

closer in isolation than in 

the busy gyre of progress,

slapped down for our death defying ways

a bomb of a species temporarily made safe

but capable still of the kind of action 

eras are named from 

When the earth fools itself 

like an indulgent parent into thinking 

we mean our mumbled sorry

we’ll blink in unison 

and retreat to our shared hallucination;

a testament to the cluttered stratum 

we’ll leave to geology,

discarded things in the mess of space 

choosing every time the only path life knows 

And when this experiment in consciousness 
concludes that choices hurt; 

all our urgent endeavour hardened to rock, 

I hope amongst the Kinder toys, and cars,
some art survives

so alien archaeologists may know

how close we came to understanding;

the privilege of our place;
the choice is ours to make.