They file past, upturned faces awestruck with wonder.

Not one of them has ever seen my kind before

Nor will they likely do so again, for I am the last.

It has been more than a generation since my kind went under

There will be no saplings, no seeds, not now, not anymore

The time of my kind, my species, is forever past.

Our murderers cannot yet admit they made a blunder

Poisoning the air, destroying every single spore

Eliminating the greenery of Earth's forests vast.

Only now when faced with the world's last living tree

Encased in a museum diorama behind leaded glass

Do they encompass what their collective hubris has done.

Why must it cost such an ungodly price to see

The death of all their futures in the follies they surpass,

Will they know of losses more than they believe to have won?

We cleaned their air, Mother Nature's own promise and guarantee,

From the mighty oaks and elms to the densest prairie grass

That sweetened every breath and succored them from the sun.

Now machines do the work to filter their every lung's taste

And shield them from Sol's bitter, biting, burning rays

Their adaptation their only defense against their folly's fault.

While I stand here to the last, awaiting eventual rot & waste

Under school children's astonished, amazed and wary gaze

Every bitter tear waters my bed of soil with killing salt.

Until with germination has my imposed loneliness been replaced

And with new hope might seedlings be interred to raise

Will vegetation rebound from the meatlings unwitting assault.

So pass me by with a look, attend well the words of your guide

Who tells you of how my kind once kept your kind alive

And of how your arrogance cost us everything we ever knew.

Think well on what you will do when I, the last tree has died.

How will your children or theirs ever hope to survive,

When only ashes coat the world where once greenery grew?

Think long and hard on how we all may safely abide

How photosynthesis is required for both of our species to thrive

So you will never have to moan, “If only we knew?”