Embroiled in embryology,
animal cells that start-up life?
Let's have a peek at biology
without the use of laboratory knife.
We have the ovum and spermatozoon
do they fertilize the fecund mind?
Neural groove and tube, too soon
are words science students find
when trying to memorize each term.
There are notochord; primitive segments,
separation of embryo, enquirer's learn,
from cozy somnambulating dependence
prior to insistence on a final term.

Amazing bodies, babes have when born.
Not all parts rhyme.
Little bones with lovely names. Osteology.
Balanced just in time,
dna at work, building living non-mythology.
Sacral, coccygeal, lumbar, thoracic, cervical
vertebral column enclosing neural freeways
while thorax, sternum, ribs and costal cartilages
embrace internal cavities filled
with softer systems supporting life.

Away from rhyme, the home of brain,
beautiful bones soon to weld as one.
Once occipital, parietal, frontal temporal,
sphenoid and ethmoid remember
how to become a solid skull.
Hear the name of facial bones
where maxillae and mandible
will soon chew the foods of life
while lacrimal, palatine and zygomatic arch
curve and curl; the nasal concha quivers
in expectant pleasure of a pleasant sniff.
Vomen and hyoid can't be overlooked
without the skull being something less if
life's oven is to have us perfectly cooked.

What of clavicle and scapula?
The Ulna and elegant radius
don't sound as happy as the humerus.
But to give the hand somewhere to hang
its carpus and metacarpus, the wrist,
above phalanges of the hand.

Swing those hip bones,
that pelvis Elvis swung
as femur and patella wagged,
and tibia and fibula
supported everything above them
on the tarsus and metatarsus
and phalanges of the foot.
Sesamoid bones, says who?
Yes, there is syndesmology,
and its interest is the development of joints.
The classy classification of movements
Mr. Presley made famous more
upon the stage; some say improvements
on the moves that came before.

I can articulate articulation of most
the aforementioned skeletal schemes,
their clever names so Latin
one might have to learn the language
just to speak them. Sounds like satin;
Acromioclavicular articulation.
Can you say it?
Metacarpophalangeal articulation
isn't funny if one can't do it.
Who would hold the coffee cup
if they couldn't while they sup?

Be not mindless of the muscles
the mycology of strength.
Tendons, aponeuroses and fasciae
supporting bundled tissues, their length
that flexes, extends, reach and stride.
Muscles surround, though sometimes thin,
those bones and make us look like bodies
beneath so much soon to wrinkle skin.

Angiology? And blood? The fluid part.
There's that vascular system
with its pump, the beating heart
at work with life as much as love,
and pericardium within the thoracic cavity
mentioned somewhere far above.
The Arteries, blood freeways,
the axillary, and the largest, the aorta.
Carotid? Not as smelly as it sounds.
Subclavian sounds a bit subversive,
and branchial, as though it should have leaves.
Raidials? Not tires.
Thoracic, abdominal and descending aorta?
I told you it was large, yet there are common iliac arties
like the hypogastric, femoral and external,
though it's not outside the body.
I love the sound of popliteal, anterior tibial,
and arteria dorsalis pedis!
Not as fond of posterior tibial
but I know it's needed
if we're to stay alive.

Veins, the return trip subway system
blood must take to reach the heart.
They have suspicious nomenclature,
do they not? Yet each a necessary part,
with pulmonary, diploic, ophthalmic and emissary
tubing, a spider-web of cooperating lanes.
The portal system, without port authority
or uniformed patrol, these viens,
though there's the lymphatic system, too,
and all its necessary plumbing, dusts and vessels,
colored not like veins in blue.

The system that commands my attention
is neurology. For within that bony structure
called the skull and vertebrae, such invention
lies the magic master plan. A spinal cord
with cerebrospinal fluids all around
medulla spinalis - the encephalon,
its rhombencephalon, mesencephalon
and prosencephalon.
Don't those names impress you?
They do me.

We're a bundle of nerves!
Olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear
trigeminal, abducent, facial and acoustic,
the glossopharyngeal and vegus
as well as the accessory and hypoglossal nerve.
Of all the nerve!
Can't I just remember we have a spinal cord?
No. Because there are posterior divisions,
anterior divisions, thoracic and even
lumbosacreal plexus, let alone the sacral
and coccygeal nerve.
I see I'll have to be sympathetic as well,
for there are portion after portion of this system
that twist and swerve.
I'm glad I taste and smell and see and live!
Though the only way to see these nerves
takes equipment I'm not equipped with.
Did you know your eye had tunics? My oh my!
A refracting media? Or accessory organs
of the eye?
I hear - because I have two ears
with a tympanic cavity and auditory ossicles,
a labyrinth of names I'll not denounce,
for I like their sounds, though some impossible
to pronounce!

Splanchnology The respiratory apparatus.
A larynx, no relative of some ocelot I assure you.
The trachea, bronchi, pleurae,
mediastinum and airy lungs, I'm sure you knew,
quite the apparatus, might one say?
There're a few more parts of us to consider.
Humans love to eat, to procreate,
so let's look into the mouth, I'm so a-twitter,
with its fauces and pharynx, (I just ate),
then down the esophagus to abdomomen
and stomach before what's eaten as of late
visits the small intestine, large intestine,
gets digested and infused with stuff infinite,
tiny chemistries from organs such as
liver and pancreas before taking final leave
of temporary corporeal residence.

At last! There's the urogenital apparatus
with its organs of filtration and procreation,
the kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra.
But the organs that get the most attention
worldly folks know intimately.
Testes - ductus deferens, vesiculaes seminales
and ejaculatory ducts. Do not this debate.
The one that thinks he's boss?
The penis with that wily prostate
and bulbourethral glands.
Perhaps the real rulers are the ovaries
with their uterine tube and uterus
while the vagina and mammae
get more attention than the rest of us.

There are more , I must assure you,
though Donald may not like them,
but we have those clever 'ductless' glands.
The thyroid and the thymus, hypophysis cerebri,
parathyroid - one must clap their hands!
The pineal body sounds suspicious,
but so does the spleen, in most the classes,
while the chromaphil and cortical systems
go unnoticed by the masses.
Shall I continue this absurdity any longer?
If I do - I'll surely drive someone insane
so I'll stop here in hopes of getting stronger
for I might have to actually use this inane brain.

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