Recapitulation
By Courtney Druz

The first changes are so rapid and extreme
they cannot even be called growth
but rather, magic, the sleight of hidden
hand that moved from cell in primal slime
through early bud-limbed creatures,
weird appendages sprouting and dissolving,
chimeras spun by incantatory logic
beneath our dimension, finally fixing his
earthbound shape, a translucent cup for his soul.

Then the sea stops heaving, he swims and stretches,
feeling the parts fill in, becoming solid, opaque,
turning jelly to bone and muscle, the heart
sends out its signals to the listeners, the soul
seats itself in prepared and hidden corners.

Now his time begins to match the known,
fattened and anointed he faces the door—
room only to twitch and wait
in his snug and sumptuous tent.

A former architect and graphic designer, Courtney Druz now spends her time as a mother of three and poet in New Jersey. Her poems have most recently appeared in Entelechy: Mind & Culture, The Other Journal, and New Vilna Review, and are forthcoming in Zeek. She holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Brown University and a M.Arch. from the University of Pennsylvania.

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