! ! A Postmodern Explanation Of Poetry: For Mike Who Asked Poem by Michael Shepherd

The brain and spinal cord
contain a hundred billion neuron cells
backed up by many more glial cells..

each neuron surrounded by its dendrons
like a tree’s inquisitive, hungry roots
or a seacreature’s gently waving fronds

making synapses, new connections
between what one cell holds, and another,
as a tree’s roots seek its heavenly nourishment in earth;

so that, each time two words of poetry,
put together for the first time by a poet
in just that way, strike your mind or heart,

one of those neurons cries silently ‘Aha! ’
as poetry’s roots and fingers touch its core;
two neurons now joined in holy bedrock..

and since our mind, some say, is but our store
of memories previously received,
then poetry enjoyed, remembered, builds our greater mind;

and all this, like the champions of the Olympics,
so appropriately named after that godly height,
might well be described by corny commentators as,
sheer poetry in motion…