Pathologist and poet Dr. Srinivas Mandavilli illuminates the microscopic, and the universal, in JAMA‘s “Brain Biopsy.”
Mandavilli lets us know that in “neuroradiology they have a gift for reading the mind.” In moving a glass slide, he learns to “bow in silence and see an underworld / —an otherworld where planets improvise like nuclei.” The narrator alternates between the microscopic and the broader cosmos. Through this, Mandavilli evokes a sense that we are all part of a grander whole, even the minuscule and aberrant parts of us.
His poem ends with the relational, with a hint at the journey we travel: “While we drive on a summer evening, she rests, / her long fingers intertwine, the heft / of her dark tresses strewn carelessly like the road ahead.”
Writing Prompt: Think of the smallest and largest components of life, of existence. How are they connected? Alternatively, pull out your old histology textbook or your child’s microscope. Examine a slide and write what you see, how this observation makes you feel. Write for 10 minutes.