Medical Geology

Medical Geology
By ROSTI

So, we have this task, see
To create a piece based on words
Selected by another
Based on their expertise.
Their work.

This is tough for me.
I’m a one-trick pony.
It’s a pretty slick trick…
I can cut a person open
and then put them all back together again with ease.

BUT…
That’s about it.
So, I picked these geological terms.
A subject I know nothing about.
Medical geology?

Medial moraine
…any glacially formed accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions on Earth
I’m thinking about how, embryologically,
The human spine is formed…
Backbone a synonym for moraine.

Granitic intrusion
…like Devil’s Tower
In that Spielberg movie
I went to nightly while ill
During training.

Nunatak
…a glacial island
I’m reminded of this woman,
Her cancerous flesh
Jutting out from her pale breast skin.

Tarn
…a mountain lake or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier.
Like Crater Lake
Where I and my son’s mother abused one another
For the sake of Shakespeare.

Bergschrund
…(from the German for mountain cleft)
German, like mittleschmerz,
The “middle pain”…
Free blood in the peritoneal cavity after ovulation.

Then things got easier…

Constituent
…what I am –
Or at least had been –
On the day before the anniversary
of Kristallnacht.

Grinder
There it is!
…an ice hockey player whose primary function is to check opponents,
Like Coburn, or Sustr.
I knew one!!
Hockey, being another skill I’d forgotten about.

All this for the craft of poetry,
Which I’m hoping will be
A way for me to say
Things unsay-able.
About grief, and loss, and dis-ease.

Unsay-able because
IF I said them
I’d cry.
And Boys Don’t Cry
And I’m a boy.

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