A scientific theory used to describe abrupt
evolutionary changes that create new species
They say dinosaurs shrank to become birds. Locomotion forsaken
for tree limbs and flight. Bird-hood is not a phase I am familiar with,
tiny lifetimes between bristles to quills to filoplumes.
The lines of any change are never neat. A spectacle of smallness
in search of survival. I don’t understand what it is to be the last
of anything. But I am told I was once a girl hell-bent on havoc
with bangs too long for anyone to guess what I was thinking.
The story goes:
accidents are reserved
for the warm-blooded. Skulls collapsed, wishbones fused—
bidding molecules for earnest change we still can’t prove.
The day came when a flightless blood vessel started to create
its own successor. Blind seeds look for root. Birds mimic
chainsaws. Rapidity lives between less and full.
My evolution speaks with its hands: gestures of hope,
a remarkable lie about peering at a long-dead star.
I am without etymology, there is no path to trace
my finger backward. Show me to the beginning, won’t you?
Chelsea Querner (she/her) is a poet living in Portland, Oregon, and spends most days running after her two pugs. Chelsea was named a 2022 Summer Fishtrap Fellow, and her recent work has appeared in Barrow Street Journal, Waccamaw, and La Piccioletta Barca.
