Finding Faces

We are hardwired to find faces:
Jesus in a pretzel,
Elvis on a bun,
monsters in the curtain folds
when we were very young.

The mandrake root has limbs
like a homunculus, buried alive.
Too sinister for Esther
when rude vegetables were funny.

The mandrake's scream belongs
with the songs of swans
and the ancient tongue of dragons.
Mythology is older
and deeper than biology.