From Brain Pickings:
“In this enchanting animated poem, Ducker joins visions with artist Kate Sweeney to deliver a soulful prescription partway between science and metaphor, between organ and instrument, as palliating to the physiology of illness as it is to the psychology of heartbreak:”
A SCIENTIST’S ADVICE ON HEALING
by Christy Ducker
Try to accept
this fat red hurt
is your starting point,
in the way a pen must be put to paper
in one particular spot,
then move
beyond
the globby flap
of blame
and past
the mono-sulk
of pain.
Change the subject,
before it’s too late.
Sketch out
what health
you do possess,
what signal-cascades,
what flotilla of cells
circumnavigate you,
then draw yourself back
together again,
in a language
of your own.
Your body’s talk
is loose as lymph —
it’ll have you open out
as a tree,
or sneak up on pain
as assassin,
sidekick,
or wolf.
Encourage this
for healing won’t come at you
straight.
Embrace the lack of heroics —
this isn’t Hollywood,
it’s you,
in a plot
that may
or may not resolve.