Remainders

In the eons after we are gone
what will remain of us?
Certainly the obstinate secret
of Roman concrete will persist,
and the island of refuse in the pacific
will wander up the shiftless coastlines,
and armies of plastic soldiers
will occupy forests we once cut down.
But the beauty of our ideas, our selves,
our souls will have escaped into oblivion.
The leaves of books will not even rustle
in the wind, having carbonized
into something akin to coal.
And when alien footprints unsettle the soil
countless years from now,
they will not know that
The blackened squares they hold
in however many fingers they possess,
are mere fossils of
our sorrows and
our hopes,
our final unheard echo
in the caverns of existence.