Rick Leddy

Walter A. Uffelman

The World is 6000 years old
And not a day older
Said Walter A Uffelman
Principal at Good Shepherd Inglewood Lutheran School
Lutheran School – Not to be confused with Catholic School
where God punished children with stiff white blouses, pleated plaid skirts,
dark whiffing corduroys and ancient penguin teachers with long rulers
So we were told by Walter A Uffelman, tall and devout,
who walked like Frankenstein bred with an orangutan
due to a back brace kept on too long
to counteract scoliosis as a child
The World is 6000 years old
From creation to now
Stated Walter A Uffelman
We can tell from the begats all the way back
To Adam and Eve
Adam begetting Seth and then Seth begetting Enos
Then there were Kenan , Mahalaleel and Jared
And Jokshan and Letushim and Midian
And Dishan and Homam and Shephi and Jobab
Right on down the line to David and Solomon
Although no daughters were mentioned
And we wondered how all that begatting happened
Without them
But that seemed incidental
All of it clearly laid out in The Book of Chronicles
And so concurred Walter A Uffelman
And he was sticking to it
Despite carbon dating and dinosaurs and evolution
My mother laughed
Because she had been taught by Walter A Uffelman, also
That the World was 6,000 years old
And she wondered why the world wasn’t 6032 years old by now
But he was sticking to it
Despite universal background radiation and exploding stars
And fossils and proto-human skulls in the Savannahs of Africa
— and the passing of three decades
It was Eve’s fault
The Original Sin
Said Walter A Uffelman
So it said in Genesis
We were tossed from the Garden of Eden
6,000 years ago
And things would be perfect today
If she hadn’t been curious and listened to the slithering tempter
We would still be naked and happy
The lamb would be lying with the lion
And we wouldn’t have had to flee East of Eden
Where uncertainty and thorns and death and Roman Catholics awaited
But we didn’t listen, so here we are
God was all about bad cop back then
And we were bum-rushed 6000 years ago
Despite multiverses and string theory and geology
And I couldn’t understand why
God would punish us for wanting to know
the difference between Good and Evil
For craving the knowledge of self-awareness
And it was then
That I voluntarily left Eden
On my own two feet
Never to return
Although I still think of Walter A Uffelman
Now gone for three decades
The World still 6000 years old
And not a day older