Sometimes towline, sometimes twine,
That tugs inherently and blindly,
Recoils and fails to confine
What crawls four-leggedly inside me.
Whose fossil toils, which taxa flexions
Bear blame for this relict paralysis?
Who bred in evolution of affections
Our erring ear — incus and malleus —
Now mutant incubus and malice?
Bones enlarge; their owners disappear;
Age and the Ages calibrate their size;
But with one death, with each succeeding year,
Beyond all odds inexorable and unlikely,
One face recalled, enormous in my eyes,
Unearths the mute allometry of the psyche.
Toils – A play on two meanings: 1) long, tiring efforts; and 2) traps.
Taxa – Plural of taxon, a scientific category of similar creatures.
Flexion – Bending or raising an arm or leg.
Relict – (Pronounced re-LIKT) – Left unchanged in a process of change; persisting as a remnant of an extinct organism.
Incus and malleus – (Pronounced INK-us and MAL-ee-us) Two small bones in the middle ear of mammals.
Allometry – (Pronounced a-LOM-e-tree) The relative growth of a part in relation to the entire organism; for example, in the evolution of mammals, as the body size enlarged, the facial bones also tended to enlarge, whereas the cerebral bones did not.