Flinders Poem by Denis Mair

Without looking at a dictionary, what do you think of when you see the word 'flinders'?

Besides those floating sparks one sees while stirring a campfire, it makes me think of the glowing remnants of a dream as it dissolves upon waking.

It also makes me think about mental space where thoughts and feelings, by grace or luck, may coalesce into a marvelous formation.

Such a formation changes shape, like a cloud in the mind's sky, and eventually scatters.

From the hindbrain through all the the concourses of the midbrain,

where activities of the sensory and motor cortexes are entrained with memory and emotions---

then up through the medial forebrain bundle, and finally up to the cerebral cortex.

At each stage a tug of anticipation encourages the cloud-shape to evolve and extend.

It is cloud-like, but because it is shaped and drawn by desire, it can be a fiery cloud.

It is drawn up a stairway of reward centers until it arrives at a place of abstract contemplation.

It is lucky if it can arrive there whole, and even if it does, it cannot float there very long.

It arrives only to dissolve, but its flinders will remain awhile,

glowing with the remnant energy of wishes that shaped that cloud.