HOW WAS MAN CREATED?

Did He place
one helix of the cruel D.N.A. molecule
in a primordial swamp
with spoken demand - replicate!
And then out of the murky green water Adam appeared
gasping for air and wet behind the ears.

Did He hover over
a young baboon
playing high up on the tree canopy
until mutation occurred?
And then He reached down
grabbed him by the thumb
and set him down on the black ground.

Did dust from the center, where feelings
of love, kindness and forgiveness now enter
fall into a large clear lake
on whose gray slate surface glowed
red rivers of fire?
After eons, when the living waters
were warmed by the heart of the sun,
struck by lightning countless times,
on a night when seven comets streaked
simultaneously across the black face of the moon,
someone emerged from that lake
and crawled, with limbs trembling, onto shore.
He looked at what was, and said, "It is good."

- Bernard Otterman