! ! Why Shouldn'T Poems... Poem by Michael Shepherd

…be hot out of a
news item – even if
it barely ranks as ‘poetry’ -
if it moves a would-be poet
more than many a poem…?

Here’s the story: Dr Jill Bolte Taylor,
who became a neuro-scientist because
her beloved brother was schizophrenic…
had an exceptional opportunity for research

when one morning a golf-ball-sized haemorrhage
in her left brain, gave her a stroke, which
she was able to observe as it happened…

becoming herself schizophrenic in a fashion,
so that one half of her brain said
this consciousness is boundless…
while the other half said, I’m me…

struggling to support one another as
for forty-five minutes, she tried
to find her office identity
in a blur of pixels that were a number
she must dial…

it took her eight observant years
to recover; now she tells the story,
(always herself, always as boundless
as her story):
some of us smiling through our tears, her tears,
her smiles..

maybe I could turn that into
more of a poem… but why?
Between these lines, between
she and me, I and you,
the boundless, too..