The planet Earth is really, rather ancient, don’t you know,
It was formed four and one half billion years ago.
Now if you could shrink all those years into twenty four hours,
And somehow could sit through that time using some special powers.
Then you would have a long, amazing, and special Earth Day,
And this is how the time would go, the scientists do say.
Not that long after midnight, before the clock struck one,
The earth would form from rocks and dust that swirl around the sun.
And fifteen minutes later (don’t say you weren’t warned),
A small planet would hit us. That’s how the Moon gets formed.
And through the next few hours, before the clock struck four,
Asteroids would hit the earth a few million times more.
Then on through breakfast, you’d see mountains fall and watch them rise,
Surrounded by red oceans, under stinky, pinkish skies.
It would be breathtaking… But don’t breathe ’til 11:10,
Because before that time the air would have no oxygen.
By afternoon, more continents. There would be life as well.
But until four nothing would live that had more than one cell.
Around 8:00, you’d put on a big sweater or shawl,
Because the earth would freeze up like a giant, blue snowball.
It would warm an hour later. And then you’d see a sight,
New creatures would start to appear, up, down and left and right.
But still be patient, because it would take ‘til half past nine,
Before you saw an animal that even had a spine.
And dinosaurs? They wouldn’t show until 10:38.
(Bet you didn’t know the dinos would show up so late.)
But by 11:30, T. Rex and friends would get destroyed,
When the earth got hit by a gigantic asteroid.
And after that, mammals would come, like whales, and bears, and bats,
And mastodons, and giant sloths, and big, saber-toothed cats.
But humans, well, I am afraid you’d have to bide your time,
We’d come in the last seconds of 11:59.
That’s right, you’d have to wait until Earth Day was almost through,
Before you would see anything that looked like me or you.
And given all the time and things that had to come before,
I sure hope we don’t mess Earth up with greenhouse gas or war.
It took so long to get to creatures that can write and talk,
It would be quite a shame if now we all turned back the clock.
Barracudas, Buffaloes, and Balderdash: 