FOR I ONLY AM escaped alone to tell thee.

Well, that is to say, I and Angeline – my shaggy redeemer.

As that deluge crashed over Eden and swept me up, the she-goat stayed close at my side, tumbling right along with me amidst all the detritus. Boards and crates and chickens and trees churned inside that great rise up collapsement of oceanic power and island-scrubbing purgation.

From within those violently breaking waters, I caught a glimpse of the Ark. It was launched like a vessel cut loose from its dry-dock. But whereas a ship might then bobble and right itself to enjoy a long life at sea, the Ark proved unseaworthy, less like a boat than a large white coffin. It rose up briefly on that liquid green surge, only to promptly plunge, taking all those Shiners down with it. The whole denomination was delivered in one fell swoop to a fathomless grave at the heart of the atoll.

It could be argued that I was the lucky one. For who would not, when given their druthers, prefer one more day of this earthly existence – plagued though it is with suffering and gloom and general discomfort – to the dubious promise of heaven?

And yet, I cannot help but wonder at my friends down in that dank hole. Who is to say they are any less fortunate? Who can say for a certainty that Prudence and Adamiah were not granted the greatest of all God-given gifts? What better way to leave this earthly struggle than freshly married and filled up to the brim with newlywed joy? What better end than dying with the anticipation of throwing off one’s innocence, and yet not having to go through the messy and disappointing process of having that naive dream crushed by reality’s grim truth?

But I wax cynical.

I cannot postulate with any authority.

At any rate, there I found myself – once an ill-starred scapegrace, now an apparently chosen survivor.

The island had been wracked by the flood, but it served well enough for our garden home. The trees had all been busted off and the buildings all scoured away. The only relics of humanity’s stain were a few bones and shards of rainbow glass scattered over the ground. As the wave receded, a thousand fish were left flopping like fallen angels on the sand, but the gulls cleaned them up before they ever got to stinking.

The natives never returned. But the daily rains started up again. We tipped our faces to the heavens and caught the big delicious drops on our outstretched tongues.

Time passed.

Days and nights.

I took to writing poems in the wet sand with my finger. It seemed that old yearning could not be squelched after all, and it felt good to write after so long a hiatus. I would compose my simple lines near the water’s edge, chuckling at my own clever verbalisms, only to have the rising tide wash the poems away. Something about this cycle seemed fitting and obliquely divine. It reassured me to know that my verse would be short-lived and would never pester anyone’s imagination but my own.

Angeline possessed the miraculous ability of turning seaweed and twigs into robust ruminant health. I parasitically benefited from her talent as she turned her diet into milk. This served to maintain me.

At night we watched the stars.

We watched the moon.

And then each dawn, I knelt beneath the goat and took suck.

In those first days, I inevitably thought of my mother – of her gentle songs and caresses – but eventually those memories began to sink away to somewhere deep inside of me.

A new sort of paradise was at hand.

Godless.

Without stain.

And arguably improved.

I sat naked on the beach and wiped the dribble from my chin, producing a milky little blurp as I so did.

Angeline often snuggled beside me after the nursing, and I would put my arm around her neck, stroking her whiskers and admiring the view.

The ocean was lovely to gaze upon, often glassy and calm in the light of the rising sun.

We saw dolphins playing in the distance.

Or sometimes whales.

“Blah,” said Angeline. “Blah.”

I laughed and peered out at the sea.

“I could not agree with you more, my dear.”

Amen