Changeling

It is true that every
seven years we change.

Turning fourteen I started
thinking poetry.

I am now twenty-nine and
safe for six more years.


15 December 1988

My dad told me that every seven years all the cells in our bodies change. We become different people. I found this fascinating and still do. Of course there was no Internet back then to check the science but Dad said it was true and so it was true. It’s not. Well, it is, sort of. Fat cells are replaced at the rate of about 10% per year in adults. Cardiomyocyte heart cells are replaced at a reducing rate as we age. Neurons in the cerebral cortex are never replaced. There are no neurons added to your cerebral cortex after birth. Any cerebral cortex neurons that die are not replaced. Scientists are now studying other tissues to determine the turnover rate.

It was my brain I was worried about. Who cared if I got a new leg or spleen every now and then? And how come when my broken finger replaces itself it replaces itself with another broken finger? My brain, that was something precious. I still think so. The idea of losing the ability to write terrifies me and yet a couple of years after I wrote ‘Changeling’ that is exactly what happened. Between August 1991 and June 1994 I didn’t write a single poem. I thought I was done and it was a truly horrible feeling. I was no longer me.

I am fifty-six and I haven’t written a poem for over a year. Who knows what the future will bring?