Maps

Alice Major
From:   Corona Radiata. Toronto: St. Thomas Press, 2000.

That first disk of cells, held in place
like a map clamped to a table.
Fate maps, coded cartography of coasts,
unroll their silent directions.
      This to become bone.
      This to become brain.
And the disk curls into a little boat,
into a tube � like the topography of origami
pleating from two dimensions into three.

      Maps have a history, an evolution.
      What was peninsula on ancient charts
      becomes island. Small continents swell,
      large extrusions dwindle. Until it emerges �
      the familiar shape of a world.

And so a fetus changes. Pharyngeal arches shrink
to the delicate bones of the face. Limb buds lengthen
from rounded paddles to extensive isthmuses.

As though a child's unfolding
is less a tale of growth
than of discovery.

________
Note: Developmental biologists construct &&34;fate maps&&34; to show how early cells migrate as the embryo develops.

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Alice Major's works copyright © to the author.