Zoology: A Case Study

 

Zoology: A Case Study

See the soft soul
of one chiseled girl
in a vast city, Baltimore,
surreptitiously tipping books
to learn of ovary, sperm, egg,
singing in the Episcopal choir.

Her beauty is her enemy.
She escapes the choirmaster
to a public school staying late to peer
through the one and only microscope,
pursued by boys, men,
watching cells replicate, grow
feeling twin passion
a brain for science, a womb for womanhood.

A chance for university, scholarship
encouraged by a father of no education.
In the Great Depression she boards the train
for biology as a discovery, not a trap.

Sixteen years in St. Louis at a microscope
over Drosophila chromosomes,
a woman in a man’s lab.
All the good men go to war.
A professor steals credit.

Half starved, doctorate achieved,
Japan radioactive,
love unleashed,
last egg saved.
I’m born.

……

First published in Amsterdam Quarterly —thank you Bryan R. Monte, editor.
The photo is of my mom labeled “Embryology Lab 1934.”

This poem is currently published with a lovely presentation in Silver Birch Press—many thanks to editor Melanie.