Brains in a bucket on a cloudy day
black lab tops under fluorescent light
“This once was a particular person!”
I don’t shout, but pry gently, with fingers
Pink, blunt, huge, sausages that dwarf thinking,
a process once extant but now extinct
in the pale tissues being dissected
in the search for structures, tracts, commissures
This was all matter of fact long ago,
staying with me as matter of wonder,
sequestered somewhere in my gray matter,
just like what lay in those buckets that day
Rain fell and spring thunder came and sweet scent
Smoothed away what brains in a bucket meant