Phylogenetic misfit (an ode to the platypus)

You were their
missing link,
while the others
swore you
couldn’t lay eggs.

Took us a hundred years to figure out you
lay eggs.

Something about how you suckled. Something about the
membrane in place of shell.

Phylogenetic misfit.

More like a duck-billed,
beaver-tailed,
toxic-heeled,
otter, one that is acutely aware of
magnetic fields.

What kind of a bill does that? Not the horny bill of
a duck.

Even your webbed feet are wrong. Bad for walking, bad for
paddling, too.

Phylogenetic misfit.

A too cold
mammal with
reptilian ribs,
a reptilian
reproductive system.

2.8 million years got us big brains, language, symbolic thought, an ability to construct categories, while

160 million years got you a mosaic-style mess, monotreme exceptionalism, milky fur, …

That, and: the disordering of our ordering.