June 7: Make-Up Post, Tim Craven, "Neuroanatomy Practical"

I owe you guys a couple make-up posts.  I didn't blog last night.  A few things happened at the end of the day.  My sister fell down and broke her wrist.  My niece graduated from high school.  And I went on a date with my wife.

I realize that my last few posts have been, to say the least, less than uplifting.  I apologize for that.  This week has been a little difficult, and I'm having trouble regaining my balance.  Therefore, I also took last night off in order to get my bearings.

It didn't work.  I'm still pissed.

However, I have a really good poem to share with you.  It was originally published in the Summer 2014 issue of Rattle magazine.  I read it this afternoon, and it made me happy.

Saint Marty needs more happy.

Neuroanatomy Practical

by:  Tim Craven

Smaller that you thought.
More like your idea of a dog's.
You cup it softly.  Your thumb fidgets
over the fissure of a temporal lobe. 
You lift it up to the side of your head
and imagine your own, sitting in there--
firing, immortal.
If you were to lob it against the wall,
would it crumble or shatter
or liquefy or combust or bounce 
back into your hands, intact?
When she (sixty-six, Caucasian, lymphoma)
donated it to science, was this the promised
research?  You consider biting into it
as you would a peach--and, were it not
for the toxic preservative, you might.
In ten years' time you will think
what a privilege it was to hold that brain,
brim-filled with tomato soup recipes and original sin
and smells of late summer and oboe lessons
and self-taught Italian and the night sky:
The Plough, The Bear, The Big Dipper.

Star light, star bright...