The Tree Disease

They invented their end.
Some team managed to fuse
A virus, a fungus,

And an evergreen tree,
Probably intending
Either to save the world

Or invent an ideal
Bioweapon. It worked.
It raced around the world,

And nearly everyone
Came down with the disease.
Immobilized in days,

Each sent fuzzy tendrils
Downward, needles upward,
And within a decade,

Whatever hadn’t burned
Of the abandoned world
Of civilizations

Sighed gently in the breeze.
A few genetic freaks
Squeezed through the bottleneck.

Their descendants, half-starved
Shadows, slowly decrease
Beneath the fungal trees.