doctor, I said,
I had a near-life
experience
no, he said, you had
an hallucination
it was real
hallucinations are real experience, yes,
he said, but experiences of the unreal
no, doctor, I said, you don’t under-
stand. I had a near-death—
no, son, you don’t under-
stand; you had an hallucination
but another doctor explains to me,
in the velvet voice of sir Anthony Hopkins
quantum cohesion at the Planck level
some call it quantum entanglement
within the microtubules of your brain
it’s the rudiment of consciousness
and perhaps a prelude to afterlife,
though science has no means, as yet,
to either gage or quantify such . . .
either way, I’ve come to accept
that experience is a doubtful thing
though I was there and saw it all
it perhaps, as poe supposed, a dream
within a dream of waking was
David M Pitchford
28 Jan 2012
After the Vows: Poems Between Lovers
