First In Vitro Photograph of a Human Embryo

 "First In Vitro Photograph of a Living Embryo, 1965" by Lennart Nilsson

The eyes of your eyes not yet
open.  Tongue.  Bud lip.  I come
to watch the heart on its stems, divine
engine fixed to your skull.  Veins finger
yolk, creek of our shared blood.  Two cells
perform the calculations, then the blessing
of morphology.   Did I expect to see
the gills and fins, the wings and the wet beak,
the whole telling?   I follow myths through
their empty rooms, stopping to straighten the cut
flowers of your thoughts.  Doesn't a prophet
curl in the nut of each cell, foretelling
the folding and unfolding, seeds
that doom and exalt?  Perhaps
I am not wanted in this
irresistible here, to witness
the brushstrokes, the mashing
of fine print.  From this cathedral,
dear one, memory will slip
like the innocence of water,
the beginning, and inside it,
the end, just beginning to stir.

First Published in the Paris Review Spring 2005