A BRAIN AND A LEFT HAND
A brain and a left hand awoke from the darkness
The first thing they thought of was to create an im-
Age and a language from the word positive.
The left-hand took the brush that was trained
For the right hand but the right hand was dead.
He lay there paralysed recovering looking at
The shadows on the ceiling or in his wheelchair
Looking out the window at the colour of nature
Going by.
Butterfly flutter by
Nature comes in the door
And drifts like time itself.
He knows what happened to him is a cold case
of bad luck and he blames no one. The stroke
in his family genes, it lives in his children and in
his mother who gave him life and three beaut-
iful children, who’s love kept him alive.
He sits within his locked-in syndrome watching
His sky go by and translates that to poetry and art.
As if forming a form in a formless mind. What-
Ever memory was erased during the stroke was
Restored. He will
never be the same again but
The days are rolling back.
It’s hard to be positive
when your body is mangled but he is trying to get
back his brain power through poetry and art. Poetry
and art are all he has in life so they are becoming as
Keats ‘the beauty of truth’.
John Keats and Raymond Carver are two dead writers
That have given him hope and pulled him through
Those dark days. It’s
hard to find positivity in the shimmer
Of a leaf or on a hospital bed but he has found the balance
Between light and dark within the grey matter that matters
He has found hope where there is none.
SAND CASTLES
Seeing is believing in
The world that is not
There, we look deep
Inside ourselves, in
The hope that we can
Share. Life is there
for
Living for a brain and a
Left hand. The ramparts
Are guarding innocence
Upon the golden sands.
He is the king of his castle
His un-adopted world un-
Furled.
