Long ago before time began
The Almighty said, “I think I’ll make man
I’ll make him out to be
the spitting image and likeness of me.”
And so with a thunderous
and mighty Bang
so loud that the ears of the angels rang
he split the dark and light began:
the divine process of making man.
Out of cosmic debris
he gathered together
a planet and with an invisible tether
he tied it to a sun, there to go around
in space-like void, never making a sound.
He looked at it and saw it was worth
to be a place for his image,
so he called it Earth.
It took him some time
to make up his mind
but finally made the first
exemplar of mankind.
One day out of dust he formed a frame,
thought that some day
it will bring him fame.
He let the rain fall and it turned to clay
a slithery blob by the end of the day.
He tried and tried and tried again
but the divine hymn came up
with the same refrain.
The blob just lay there and did not move
Surely, his divine genius it did not prove.
After a million years,
how many no one knows,
he finally figured to blow
into the blob’s nose
just the way you blow into a balloon,
behold, came alive a naked baboon.
With a fright God said,
“Oh My Self, what is this,
is this the spitting image
of my heavenly bliss?
A naked ape, walking upright on two feet
A more fighting sight one
should never meet.”
He quickly made it some clothes
from a tree of figs
told it never again to eat apples and pigs
or else it would end up back
a slithering slime
crawling like a worm for eternal time.
He almost regretted what he had done,
this was no image of the divine
exalted one.
So he tried to correct it and eons went by
More than a million, and that’s no lie.
One fine day, on the Fourth of July
he finally succeeded with one last try.
His only spitting image became
the true and merry man
the one and true human, an American!
Jake Hjorth
Grand Marais
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