Two Square Feet of Earth / Mike Piskur

One square foot of the ground is a junkyard. This piece of the ground is a patch of sandy soil littered with bits of broken glass, a few rusted nails, various unidentifiable metal shards, rock fragments, scraps of depressingly withered grass, a crumb of what one was a Cheeto, and three ants surveying this blasted landscape. Only the gods know what other pollutants occupy this space. It's one square of a humans mucking things up for more than a century.

One square foot of the ground teems with life and death. Acorns, leaves, sticks, moss, fungi, various insects, daddy long legs, captured carbon, and untold numbers and types of bacteria munching away. People don't bother raking leaves or otherwise messing with this chunk of the earth. Only a few drops of sunlight trick down through the canopy to this space. Nature is left free to do what it will. Only the occasional fading shoe print betrays any human presence. 

One day, after enough time passes, these two squares of earth again might be the same.