“He's not who he used to be,”
His wife told me
Over embarrassment and tears.
I drained the spinal fluid,
Injected the air,
And heard his low-pitched moan.
“It'll be over soon,”
I chanted,
Referring only to
The pain of the present.
Too much air
Was hardly a diagnosis,
Yet said it all.
The man's x-rays were blighted by
Gray–black smudges of decay,
His brain's grooves impassable moats
Where narrow alleyways once
Encouraged the foot traffic of ideas.
The air dissipated.
He stopped writhing.
His wife took him home.
I still hear his remaining memories
Whimpering in their cellular beds,
And see bits of thought stranded on tiny islands,
As the darkness spreads.
The pneumoencephalogram required
A special brand of negative calculation,
A computation of what was left
After you account for the shadows.
Footnotes
Audio: Listen to Dr. Burton read this poem. NPub.org/jc04xk
- © 2019 American Academy of Neurology
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