When the Earth takes it all back

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

There is this recent trend out there that deals with speculating what the world would be like if humans just vanished. This poem was written in 1920 and inspired Ray Bradbury's story of the same name. Now the hot book is Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us", which relates to the new History Channel series "Life After People". I haven't read this yet, but will definitely do so. It is fascinating to think that the earth would simply reclaim all the buildings and roads and bridges that we work so hard to maintain.