County Durham Creation Myth

Long ago, when the earth was flat,
and the continents were cast
in different shapes
before Adam was formed from Eden's rich loam
and before God invented the monkeys and apes
a tropical rainforest
with strange-looking trees
covered this county
from the Tyne to the Tees
from the hills in the north
and the west
and the south
and to miles out beneath the sea.
The world turned,
the trees grew tall,
then died, and fell,
and became a compressed fossilised carboniferous strata
waiting to be hewn out, covered in blood
three hundred million years later.