Slices Of Brain Poem by Valerie Laws

Slices Of Brain



Third anniversary of my mother's death from dementia,
And I'm looking at slices of brain, stained pretty pink,
The neurones purplish, their nuclei clear as strawberry pips.

Like a magician in his many-coloured coat of patches, motley
Bow tie, hair like wild dendrites in a frenzy of thinking,
The pathologist initiates me into what death has revealed.

The donor's name is on the slides, their memorial, evidence
Of how memory escaped them. Alzheimer and his mates
(Lewy Body, Parkinson, Vascular, alone or in cahoots)

Miss no tricks. Tau Proteins strangle and swamp, cutting off
The synapses, keeping the thoughts corralled in tangles,
Scribbles of barbed wire around the nucleus, sometimes

Killing the cell like a rubber band round a lamb's balls,
So a ghost tangle is left, guarding empty space.
(Are there ghost memories inside?) Ameloid proteins

Lag the axons, the dendrites, the outreaching fronds
Which pass torches of thought, until
There's a plaque, like a fingertip print

Stubbed on the connections. Scattered booby traps,
You have to look out for them. Cortical, hippocampal
Layers, like lagoons and sandy beaches, slide after slide,

Pebbled with tangles, wracked with plaques,
In a shrinking brain losing weight and substance,
Because there's ‘vacuolation', holes where words were.

And it happens, we don't feel it, until it's noticed by our friends,
And called a senior moment, until there are too many moments
To be funny any more.

POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
Part of my work with neuroscientists and pathologists, researching the science of dying, dementia and ageing in the brain. This explains what the signs and symptoms of dementia are - it's not madness, or an inevitable part of ageing, it's a disease causing physical brain damage.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Bri Edwards 17 March 2019

i believe you meant " anymore" at the end, not " any more" . and maybe Amyloid, not Ameloid, but, hey, i'm American. ha ha. bri ;)

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Bri Edwards 17 March 2019

i've had this in MyPoemList about 7 years, but i see no comment below for some reason. am i demented/daft? ? i'm adding this to my in-progress April showcase of poems, this month of the British Isles. bri :) Thanks.

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