If the Ontogeny Recapitulates the Phylogeny

In plain English, the title refers to the theory that the development of the individual in the womb recreates the development of the species, so that human embryos supposedly have gills at one point and a tail at another, as if they are recapitulating the evolution of the human race.  I wrote this poem based on a memory of high school biology before discovering that this theory has been discredited and has little to do with Darwin's theory of non-linear/multi-branched evolution.  I hope, though, the poem can diverge from science and still get at an experiential truth.

     If Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

then gestation is evolution writ small
as the embryo compresses eons
into nine months, moving from mere
amoeba to gilled fish to fingered fowl
to tailed then tail-less monkey – each stage right
on cue in this Darwin-devised drama.

But who wrote the second act in which
this process is painfully reversed?
First our faces become as wrinkled as
an orangutan’s perched top a chicken’s
neck; then our breathing’s as labored as a
beached fish, and our consciousness shrinks till we
are confined again to a single cell.

Beckett took over where Darwin left off.