Names tumble, like clothes in a drier.
They are a broad informal boulevard of anonymous
trees without labels, hieroglyphics,
first findings in an arbitrary location,
then scattered shards, flaked and worn,
faded, but still faintly pigmented beneath ancient enclosures,
arcane lines, inscriptions incorporated into stone,
requiring, requesting, obligating:
a machine to scan with, dissecting each configuration of the word.
Thus one’s model, its connectionist nature,
becomes evident The pitcher
is reattached to its handle,
daughter with father,
father with his son,
a patent jig-saw in time’s
laboratory of experimental genealogy.
Therefore Darwins interbreed
and peter out to a whisper
in mere centuries,
while Huxleys and Spencers
interchange
chromosomal qualifications, genetic proclivities,
producing a locust swarm of writers
for book-seller’s delectation.
Who has not confronted this conflict,
been swamped by the waves, or managed to swim in them?
Why not this woman then,
with her father’s last name,
scribbling her way into journals?
Why not? Better this than wastrel millions.
Keys are not criminals.
Wherefore are there doors
if not to unlock and to enter them?