As a tone and theme, regret is the driving force of “Dear Future Generations: Sorry.” From the poem’s opening lines, “I think I speak for the rest of us when I say, / Sorry,” (Lines 2-3), the speaker conveys regret. Defined as feeling of sadness or disappointment about something that has happened or has been done, regret implies an action that has already happened, and which cannot be undone. In “Dear Future Generations: Sorry,” the speaker has regret for the way the planet has been treated and mistreated, the deforestation, air and water pollution, and the inhospitable planet that will inevitably pass to future generations.

Much of the poem communicates sorrow and a feeling of powerlessness that defines the speaker’s regret. The poem functions as a list poem in which the regrets are listed and stacked up. Each regret functions as a mistake that humanity made concerning the earth and environment. For example, the speaker states in Line 59, “I’m sorry that our footprints became a sinkhole and not a garden” (Line 59). While the listed regrets function in the poem as mistakes, these mistakes are challenged in Line 65 with the volta, and the speaker states, “Because an error does not become a mistake / Until you refuse to correct it” (Lines 67-68).