Evolution

This poem appeared originally as a lineated poem, to be read in a book. A professor challenged that the theme, evolution, maybe required more lines—time. I disagree, I believe that the poem stands on its own as transcribed below.

But I did wonder whether I could write code to present each line of the poem generatively and in a way that maintained the spirit of the poem. I’ve used Javascript here to display lines of the poem in infinitely varied sequences and, I feel, the poem has expanded in this presentation from its original.

Evolution

my mother
kept her foot
on my tail
while I was
growing up

so I wouldn't fall
from the family tree

but I became older
and my tail fell off