The way the eagles return to the same nests,
this is the way the mind sometimes returns
to the same memory—as if the mind wings across
all other branching neurons to ever arrive
at the same comfortable place. There are,
of course, many other places to land,
some of them perhaps more beautiful,
more sturdy. Still the mind returns to that
one moment. As tonight when my thoughts again
migrate to the summer evening when my grandmother
and I danced in our old white living room,
a waltz on the radio and her leading me in
the one, two, three, one, two three steps
that she loved. And her hair is white
and pinned up high. And her lips are red
and her nails are red and she smells like
cigarettes and Toujours Moi. There are
millions of other moments we shared,
so why do I always alight here first?
Perhaps for the thrill of her sharing her joy
which so often she did not share.
Tonight, as on that night, the long summer light
streams through the window, weaves into
the nest of memory as if to strengthen it the way
an eagle might weave in new sticks, new lichen,
new grass, so that the next time the mind
wants to arrive here, the memory will be waiting,
even softer, even more home than before.
Posts Tagged ‘brain’
Synaptic Plasticity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, dancing, grandmother, memory, Mimi, synapse on May 11, 2025| 5 Comments »
This Is How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amygdala, autumn, brain, death, scent on October 25, 2023| 8 Comments »
It’s the chill air, say the scientists,
that allows the nose to delineate
the musky smell of autumn,
not like the warm summer air
that traps and mashes
all the aromatic molecules together.
No, it’s the constricting nature of cold
that lets us pick out the sweet loam
of dried grass and peaty scent of sugars
breaking down in the leaves.
But it’s memory that says,
Isn’t this smell wonderful.
It’s the amygdala that relates it
to the childhood joy
of skipping through gutters of oak leaves
and the adult joy of jumping
in great piles of cottonwood leaves
with my son.
In this golden moment,
I’m every age I’ve ever been in the fall,
and every version of me basks
in low autumn light. This is how
I breathe in the fragrance of death
and decay and moldering,
and think isn’t it wonderful, this life.
Journey of Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advice, brain, grief, impermanence, Joi Sharp, journey, love, path, wisdom on February 22, 2022| 6 Comments »
with thanks to Joi Sharp
When my teacher told me
Everything we love can
and will be taken from us,
I did not know how she
was preparing in me
a synaptic path.
I understood her words
in the way one understands a journey
by reading a map.
Now, ten years later, with every breath
I travel this path of loss
as so many others have before me,
and yet there is no trail, no signposts,
no destination, and the path changes direction
from moment to moment.
But the path does not feel foreign.
Every turn of it is paved with truth—
Everything we love can and will be taken from us.
Those words now offer
the strange comfort of prophecy
as I wander these trails of impermanence,
stunned with gratitude even as I weep,
alive with loving what doesn’t last,
astonished by the enormity of love—
how love is the red thread that pulls us through,
not a thread to follow,
but a guide that never, ever leaves the path.
Stubborn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, healing, heart, path, stubbornness on October 13, 2020| 4 Comments »
When the brain is separated from the heart, it is capable of doing terrible things to each other and the planet.
—Jane Goodall
And so I try to tend the path each day
between brain and heart.
Whatever smallnesses I trip on,
I try to remember to bow as I remove them.
Whatever weeds try to overrun it—
weeds of should and shame—
I try to yank them out, knowing full well
I never get the whole root.
The more I travel the path,
the easier it is—
though steep sometimes,
and the effort to go on
makes me weep.
And sometimes, it feels unfamiliar,
though I’m sure I’ve travelled this way before.
Frightened, lost, tired, exposed—
yet I try to find and preserve the path.
Because the stakes are too high
when the path is gone.
Because the healing is so great
when I honor the path
step by stubborn step.
Synapse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, connection, memory, neurons, poem, poetry, synapse on August 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »
We are perhaps like neurons
that never touch—
but that doesn’t stop
the chemical buzz,
the lightning charge,
the electric thrill
that leaps the gap—
and in that span
all meaning is made,
long red ropes of memory
twisting and knotting,
braiding, unbraiding,
and nothing
is ever the same.
How I Stopped Eating Sugar on my Corn Flakes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, brain, flight, memory, poem, poetry on November 3, 2016| 2 Comments »
Somewhere in the 100 billion cells
of my brain is the memory
of the playground in second grade
when Jenny told me birds could fly
because their bones were hollow,
and, she reasoned, if we could lose
enough weight, we, too,
could have hollow bones, and we, too
could fly.
Surely linked to that memory
are thousands of other neurons
that disprove her claim—
neurons related to air pressure, thrust,
strong breast muscles, osteoporosis—
but there is, perhaps,
still one cell in there somewhere
across the synaptic gap,
that lights up at the memory
of Jenny’s suggestion
as if to say,
wow, that’s cool,
let’s try it.
Dear Scarecrow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, connection, poem, poetry, scarecrow on March 19, 2016| 6 Comments »
I, too, wish to confer with the flowers.
I, too, wish to consult with the rain,
but I have spent so many years
learning that I’ve lost the ability
to speak and listen in these natural tongues.
Today I sat beside an old spruce tree
for an hour and never understood
what it had to tell me. I tried.
Perhaps that is the problem, the trying.
I don’t know how to do it any other way.
Oh Scarecrow, I know too much.
Me and all my certainties. I’ve made walls
out of what I took as wisdom, and now
I cannot see around them. I made
stories out of facts and histories, and now
I cannot hear the spruce. I can barely
hear my own wild heart as it shouts
in some strange language I have
filed away or perhaps I never knew?
Oh this brain, how it costumes
everything else into terms of risks,
probabilities and rules.
How I long to listen clearly
to the flowers, to the rain,
to my heart, to the spruce.
Musca Domestica
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, evolution, housefly, instinct, poem, poetry on February 21, 2015| 3 Comments »
The deep similarities we see between how our brains and those of insects regulate behavior suggest a common evolutionary origin. It means that prototype brain circuits, essential for behavioral choice, originated very early and have been maintained across animal species throughout evolutionary time.
—Frank Hirth, Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London, reported in Science
Sometimes there’s a twitching,
a rapid rubbing of the hands,
a longing to hang out
in the corner of the room,
an impulse to taste
whatever is left
on the counter,
this instinct
to be close to you,
no matter how many times
you shoo me
away.
after Fugu, by D.R. Goodman