Certainty
Certainty
My guide who’d taken me down into the huge caldera
sat me down on the clinkered earth
graphite black and sharp
and told me how his god had created the world in seven days
just as it says in the Bible, he said.
In answer I raised a quizzical eyebrow whilst
around us yellow plants swayed in the wind
and steam rose in columns from
the still unformed and restless earth.
He asked for a date for when I thought
the world had begun
and how long it had taken to make.
Billions of years seemed too vague an answer
to one so certain, so
I played his game and gave him a date.
4004 BC, according to Bible scholars, I replied.
Exactly, he said, we know precisely.