… so called because it shows a rhythmical
pulsation produced by the flow of blood
in the vessels of the brain.
—Webster’s

The boggy spot atop her skull,
which would at birth accommodate
the whole pad of my thumb, of late
has disappeared—parietal

bones now fused into a full
and obdurate concavity.
How comforting to know that she
no longer is so vulnerable,

at least in that one crucial place.
But part of me half-misses it,
the chink in her small basinet,
and tempts me almost to embrace

the crackpot views of those poor nuts
who have nostalgically trepanned
themselves, or had themselves trepanned;
by drilling through their sinciputs,

they draw more blood into the brain
—supposedly—and thus restore
the magic buoyancy of yore,
that infantile, Wordsworthian

...

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