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March 12, 2019; 92 (11) Reflections: Neurology and the Humanities

Air casts a long shadow

Robert A. Burton
First published March 11, 2019, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000007101
Robert A. Burton
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Air casts a long shadow
Robert A. Burton
Neurology Mar 2019, 92 (11) 537; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000007101

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“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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