There is next to me in Hebrew class

A religious, pretty, lanky lass.

During the break she talks with resolution

Of the folly, the madness, of Theory Evolution.

 

She casts Darwin and all into the mud

By invoking images of Adam and the Flood.

Yet, God knows why,

One item gives her pause,

The fossils of long-gone dinosaurs.

 

Dinosaurs?

 

She’s troubled by the lumbering beasts

And admits that once they roamed Mother Earth.

But then she smiles,

As if at an intellectual feast

As she explains away their birth:

 

Sinning Mankind brought on the rains

Because its foulness gave God pains.

Among which was a loathsome attraction

To the lower order, four-legged faction.

 

An unholy coupling of Beast and Man

Gave the world the Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus,

Followed by the waters that ran and ran

Only the first manifestation of endless tsuris.

 

Pointedly the Religious asks,

How else explain such hideous creatures

With no redeeming handsome features?

 

How can I explain to this religious lass

As we strive to learn our ancient tongue in Hebrew class,

That her way of thinking contains at least one flaw

Which goes against all Natural Law.
 

I will never be able to connect with the Other

Because she does not understand that

The warty, gnarled, enormous baby-dinosaur

Must have looked pretty good to its Mother.

 

I will never be able to connect with the Other

Because this Other does

 not, will not, understand that

The warty, highly gnarled and enormous baby-dinosaur

Must have looked pretty good to its warty, highly gnarled,

Enormous and loving Mother.

 

                                                                                 -Jeffrey Eisenmesser, 1987