Faint flame emergent from neurotransmitters.
The brain, a torch arranging patterns of awareness,
patterns of recall, encounters, adventures, and ordeals.
Covert consciousness realized in coma patients,
detected in vegetative invalids by the analyzers
of EEGs, the probers of the mind.
Bedridden with no signs of life,
These sufferers were long thought braindead.
The only question; when to withdraw life support.
But our deepest traces do often linger with immobility.
Our hardly perceptible scintillas send measurable signals.
They offer no bodily changes, no responses to cues.
They never give themselves away in behaviors.
Yet, science now knows them as genuine.
Are these the souls and ghosts felt by our ancestors?
Are these the wraiths and apparitions feared
by so many?
Created from the temporal, assembled from
life, is their structure entirely in the mind?
Maybe part of their energy resides in other realms,
places in and out of which they drift at our death.
Accepted for publication: The Opiate Journal, spring 2023
Categories:
probers, death, life, memory, mystery,
Form: Free verse
AN EASTER GREETING
Were one to dwell
On nature’s complexity –
The Earth
The Galaxies
The Universe
That soul might increase man’s knowledge
Take a pretty flower
Examine every fiber
Classify the root
And with our modern technology
Somehow benefit the here-and-now –
Better health
Longer life
A few happy hours
Victory through complexity!
But life’s main ingredient
Said Jesus Christ
Is LOVE
Least complex of nature’s qualities
Which merely says
“Come unto me”
In walking breathing faith
Leave the probers to their grasping, mental
days and ways
“Come unto me”
In walking breathing faith
And all will be simplicity
Happy Easter
With love
Dave Austin
Categories:
probers, easter, universe,
Form: Free verse