So, I’m listening to a 40 year old sonic reality
–the Beatles to be exact. So many people and things
have left their trace
between my neurons,
deep in the synaptic pathways that have become

who I am. 40 years ago I sat on a swing
in Germany
singing Help, Ticket to Ride,
All You Need is Love. My parents and brother
were alive. All was not well with the world.
The Vietnam war bled away the lives of a generation
but we had hope, we wanted to

give peace a chance. We wanted to believe
Love was all we needed. Well,
we need food too, don’t we, and water,
fresh air, people we love, a world to stand on
that we don’t shake, rattle and roll
with our hate. Today I study neuroscience,
try to understand how reality is created in us
by DNA, culture, all the things pressing into
the wet clay of our minds
that presses back, shapes as much as it is shaped. Yeah,

Life is the miracle we have been waiting for,
this messy tangling up
of everything into

the only thing that matters
within which we could find
everything we think it is we want, if only we could just