No Gap to Mind

When the insula fires up
With disgust, gut reactions
Don’t care if the insula

Was responding to a bite
Of rotten meat, to a thought
Of rotten meat, to a face

It found grotesquely ugly,
Or to reports on the news
Of horrific behavior—

The stomach churns in response,
Literally visceral,
An event in which the gap,

As one scientist puts it,
Between message and meaning
Disappeared. What gap was that?

Meaning comes to the message
As Death stopped for Dickinson.
The social repurposing

Of disgust wasn’t meaning
Any more than wings as fins,
Or swim bladders repurposed

For lungs, or jawbones for ears
Made meanings. The meaning showed
When the scientist arrived

And declared it meaningful,
Since the declaration and
The attentive scrutiny

Manufactured that meaning.
The insula generates disgust.
That means what you make it mean.