"And God said to Noah..."

Why did God pick Noah?

"You are righteous..."
    said God.

Is God aware?
    Noah?
    Is any human "righteous?"

Noah builds an ark...
    without which
    we'd never have
    such great children's books.

Gopher wood and pitch...
    we think of plans
    but Sumerians built
    with reeds.

I'm betting on reeds...
    another good reason
    it will never be found.

The good news being
    that God is not so bad
    after all.

He won't wipe us all out...
    only the bad buys
    who miss the ark.

"The flood continued
    forty days
    upon the earth."

It says the whole earth
    was flooded...
    which is what it feels like
    when you're in one.

They found some clamshells
    way up on mountains...
    and remembered stories
    older than the hills.

The Bible version
    is one of many...
    only the names have changed.

Whether you believe it
    or not
    it evokes an amazing fact.

How our existence
    depends on a gene pool
    which was not flooded out.