Brain Poetry

Picture the Mind

By Myra Sklarew

It’s not a pretty sight—Vesalius’s  folded surface

of the brain. Or da Vinci’s ventricles, spinal cord

trailing down like a braided afterthought.

Or each hemisphere bed down in its cubicle,

parted by the corpus callosum, crossing guard

for traffic back and forth. Now Descartes comes

on stage, appoints the pineal gland—trusty messenger

between matter and mind. Hard to say when beauty

slipped into this equation. Axon and dendrite.

Molecules dancing across synaptic space. 

Receptors hungry for their messages.

Cascade of ions in their chrysalis of light.