From the Desk of the Editor

Doreen Schroeder

In the U.S.A., April is National Poetry Month. For the past few years, I have taken this opportunity to display my enchantment with words and language by tacking poems to the bulletin board outside my office door. In anticipation of this event, I would like to share some of my favorite poems with a biological theme.

All of the poems reproduced below are from BioGraffti by John M. Burns. I return to this small volume again and again for the pleasure of not only reading a cleverly turned phrase, but for the ideas he brings together. I have even used some of his poems in laboratory exercises by having students explain the biological concepts.

Doreen Schroeder
Mail# OWS390, University of St. Thomas
2115 Summit Ave.
St. Paul MN 55105

Evolution of Auditory Ossicles

With malleus
Aforethought
Mammals
Got an earful
Of their ancestor's
Jaw.

Elucidation Blues

With a plethora
Of words
The would-be
Explicator
Hides himself
Like a squid
In his own ink.

Gutless Wonder

Though lacking skeletal strengths
Which we associate with most
Large forms, tapeworms go to great lengths
To take the measure of a host.

Monotonous body sections
In a limp mass-production line
Have nervous and excretory connections
And the means to sexually combine

And to coddle countless progeny
But no longer have the guts
To digest for themselves or live free
Or know a meal from soup to nuts.

One Good Fern Deserves Another

A tree may be a prologue when it has a hyper bole.

Prothallia of ferns are always haploid
Producing sperms and eggs that seize the procreative role
When, of a dampness, they unite to form a diploid.

Up springs the frondly sporophyte, with rhizome, root, and rachis
And a meristem that's apical and tight.
It uncoils; but on a leaf that is preparing for meiosis
Sporangia in clusters make a very sori sight.

(And my personal favorite...)

To a Lonely Hermaphrodite

Know
Thyself.