I Was Reading a Scientific Article
They have photographed the brain
and here is the picture, it is full of
branches as I always expected,
each time you arrive the electricity
of seeing you is a huge
tree lumbering through my skull, the roots waving.
It is an earth, its fibers wrap
things buried, your forgotten words
are graved in my head, an intricate
red blue and pink prehensile chemistry
veined like a leaf
network, or is it a seascape
with corals and shining tentacles.
I touch you, I am created in you
somewhere as a complex
filament of light
by Margaret Atwood
from Margaret Atwood Selected Poems
Oxford University Press, 1976