About fell asleep waiting on doctor to come
under beguiling wall poster of limbic system.
“I’m going to give you three words, and I’ll ask
for them back before we’re done.”
I repeated each word after her:
yellow – yellow; banana – banana;
sunrise – sunrise. Then she moved
for the cuff and I rolled up my sleeve
and she asked how Susan was doing.
Sunsee, sunsaw, I thought about
Buckminster Fuller’s neologisms,
and also considered the possibility
the doctor had given me not three
but four words, sunrise compound,
two words in one meaning. There
was a time I might have discussed
this with her, but no more. I felt
my arm swell as the cuff tightened.
Had I fallen in the last year? No,
not that I could recall, small smile.
Trying to keep her three words
top of mind, I inverted them:
banana yellow sunshine, locking
them together as a descriptive
phrase, cleverly reducing work
from three chores to one.
How many beers did I drink
in a week’s time? Finally, she asked
for the three words back,
catching me off guard.
She sat quite close to me,
her face to mine, and I saw
her nonplussed, and I knew
something was wrong.
As I left her office to go down
to the lab to leave some blood,
I thought about the difference
between sunrise and sunshine,
sunshine like adding a 7th
to a sunrise triad.
The Coming of the Toads 