If Ontogeny Does Not Recapitulate Phylogeny, Then What Is Metaphor?
So, those embryonic clefts aren't gills;
the coccygeal somites-no tail; the shushing
that overwhelms us through the stethoscope
is not the sea as we claim to hear it
in a chambered nautilus; and birth
is not the lungfish gasping on dry land.
Nothing is anything else, if you mean law:
a circle emerging from its formula.
Still, the baby has evolved from us,
not just her eyes-flecks of your blue,
flecks of my brown; not just the prehensile attack
on the breakfast cereal; but as she pulls to stand:
humo erectus creating herself with the reach
that must exceed our grasp to make a metaphor.
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