The White Museum

My aunt was an organ donor
and so, the day she died,


her organs were harvested


for medical science.


I suppose there must be people
who list, under "Occupation,"


"Organ Harvester," people for whom


it is always harvest season,


each death bringing its bounty.


They spend their days
loading wagonloads of kidneys,

whole cornucopias of corneas,


burlap sacks groaning with hearts and lungs


and the pale green sprouts of gall bladders,


and even, from time to time,


the weighty cauliflower of a brain.



 

And perhaps today,


as I sit in this café, watching the snow


and thinking about my aunt,


a young medical student somewhere


is moving through the white museum


of her brain, making his way slowly


from one great room to the next.


Here is the gallery of her girlhood,


with that great canvas depicting her father


holding her on his lap in the backyard


of their bungalow in St. Louis.


And here is a sketch of her


the summer after her mother died,


walking down a street in Berlin


when the broken city was itself
a museum. And here


is a small, vivid oil of the two of us


sitting in a café in London


arguing over the work of Constable


or Turner, or Francis Bacon
after a visit to the Tate.



I want you to know, as you sit there


with your microscope and your slides,


there's no need to be reverent before these images.


That's the last thing she would have wanted.


But do be respectful. Speak quietly.


No flash photography. Tell your friends


you saw something beautiful.

 

 

"The White Museum" by George Bilgere. Reprinted with the permission of the author.