zygote development

[joel]

Collectors’ prize of butterflies all pinned
on corkboard skies and labeled— eyes delight
among the hordes upon the boards and grinned
delight affords but gross awards for flight
arrested on collections drawn to view
a paragon of beauty on the death
of insects. This is what I miss in you—
your easiness of lively bliss, your breath
of animation in my day. When you
were dead, you lay outstretched— my gaze embalmed
your myriad respects and bid adieu;
and then amid my thoughts I hid— I calmed,
imprisoned by a thought as much as freed,
when s/he is all the absent pi/e/ace I need.

[Lightning Rod]

joel, I just watched the classic movie The Collector the other night
Terrence Stamp and Samantha Egger--psychological drama
great movie and very much an expression of the same metaphor you are using here.