Brain Scan:  Bradford Pears in the Reception Room

                               for Betty      
           
Yesterday we drove 12 miles          
for my brain scan       
past trees blown down          
freshly cut stumps          
arboreal surgeons in carhart coats          
lobotomizing those who            
once were          
but now are otherwise.          
           
We drive on.        
The brain scan is important.      
Hallucinations can be signs      
of something dangerous.         
           
The wind came stampeding through          
as the weather-woman          
assumed her serious face          
and parroted fairy tales          
of disaster          
from an unpaid teleprompter          
           
and my caretaker          
reminded me that          
we're gonna have to scrooch down          
and get under the house if it comes          
           
and I nodded my head          
as I always do          
but there's          
no way          
I'm going to put            
my disabled old ass          
through that          
and she knows it.          
           
But all passed          
and we sat there          
through the wind whining          
and the rain coming down          
like...take that O Homo stupidensus!          
           
...oh well          
if it's our time to go...      
       
(which reminded me      
of the brain scan)          
           
and my voice trailing off          
the way it does        
when everything stops working,          
all my alibis out on strike.         
           
But now          
the Bradford Pears            
are waving at me          
without being answered         
as we drive along    
          
to the brain scan.          
           
This giggling grove          
of girls Emily Dickinson-clad          
shaking their limbs          
flouncing and fluttering          
along the highway          
auditioning my heart          
hitting their marks and          
flinging white bits of confetti          
to flee on the wind          
and wasting their beauty          
on an old man going to      
     
a brain scan?        
       
May I scoff      
without offending?        
           
By the time we get there,          
poetry for whatever reason          
is blim-blamming around          
bouncing off the walls of my head          
and I gotta get a pen, paper,          
this sturm and drang            
is sturmming and dranging          
me to a near-death experience          
bells whistles gongs          
sirens catcalls          
screams from the dead          
           
(all of this going off          
inside the walls of          
my rubberized head)            
           
words in scanty etymologies          
sashayin',          
tap dancin'          
entering stage right          
a little softshoe          
mr jangles          
go easy on the nerves          
merv,          
           
with insistent Bradford Pearettes            
in the waiting room tossing          
blossoms of popcorn          
everywhere and I suddenly wonder:          
           
what would it be like          
to live yr life          
this way          
inside an on-going          
never-ending poem?          
         
To have Gai'a          
suddenly manifest her glories,          
to have something            
very like a whale-full of Jonah-ette          
words stepping out into the waiting rooms          
of our lives, arrayed          
in fishnets and heels          
rockin' and blossomin' and roulettin'          
pirouettin'          
           
words we've used          
in hordes of contexts          
murmurations of situations          
spread out like          
acres of scrabbled letters          
just waiting for a wandering          
troubadour to come gasping along          
put down his weary cane and          
suddenly see seven-letter word poems          
everywhere.          
And everywhere a song.          
           
Without a pen          
where would he begin?          
           
To live your life          
and one day          
after the wind          
and the fallen trees          
and the girls swirling          
petticoats of green and white          
to shudder awake          
out of the deepest dream          
of life and be there?          
Inside a poem?          
           
One so outrageously          
wonderful that you long to call            
Officer Krumpke and demand to get arrested          
on the grounds of not seeing this beauty          
before. Or sooner.          
           
All this as I come through          
into the room          
for my brain scan        
         
and the receptionist loans me          
a pen and grudgingly paper, too,      
and checks the clock      
as an old woman coughs      
wetly into a tissue          
as the Pear-ettes join arms and      
begin the Rockettes Kick          
and the orderly comes          
briskly through the door          
and I look down at pen          
and paper,          
wondering          
what this is for.         
           
And from stage left comes          
the sound of something closing:          
the melodious click      
of Pear-ettes exiting  through      
a poetically closing  door      
with a bump & a grind      
and the Rock-ette's-Red-Glare-Kick.