Broca’s Aphasia

A Poem

Published in Dunes Review, 2021

The mind’s great faculties worn away,

some slick of once-sturdy cerebellum washes away

in a steady stream of rain water,

down it goes,

down the drain.

Capitulating to God’s fierce fancies,

he offers up his kind language.

Goodbye to his goodbyes,

his easy greetings too,

all verbiage vanished.

These difficulties will remain unnamed,

for their names are too plosive, too severe.

The easy slurs come first.

We learn with him,

this new language.

This misarticulate mumbling,

this ballad of honeybees and wind.

We learn to hear what he is saying

as he learns to say it.