Linda Stryker

Ode on the Right Lobe

Tiny trapped animal

with elephantine insights

knows but cannot tell

because of hereditary taciturnity.

It was speechless

when it found itself dumb––                                                                             

no one had cut off a tongue.

It had aspirations and desiderata,

wanted you to become a fighta

pilot, live the dangerous life.

The self-congratulatory doppelgängsta,

that cheeky mirror image on the left,

speaks the lingua franca, aces

job interviews, forces you to live

level-headed.  Right-side rejoinders

can be known in the halfway houses:

falling asleep and falling awake.

Modest and humble, it

has no viva voce in the gray matter, but

ferrys its virtues ashore

on waves of a wrenching gut,

a nagging hunch, not to mention

transcendent art and music, until

we divine its speechless whispers.