Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years From Now

“Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” appears in Matthew Olzmann’s third book of poetry, Constellation Route (2022). All the poems in this book are epistolary, meaning they are written in the form of a letter to a specific person, animal, or object. This poem is one of the shortest and most serious in the collection. Using elements of speculative fiction, it paints the picture of a potential future in which all the bees are dead, as are elephants and whales. The next generation is left with nothing but a planet destroyed by chemicals and toxic waste. In the letter, the speaker tries to clarify to the person living 50 years from now that their generation did not destroy the environment out of hatred. Rather, the speaker infers that they destroyed the planet accidentally by not paying attention to the dangers and by taking nature for granted. Like many of Olzmann’s poems, this one deals with issues of modernity and what it means to be alive in the present moment. It incorporates imagery of a technically advanced world full of benzene and jet fuel but warns against the pitfalls of some of that advancement.