This bone reached the end of its life before the rest of me.  And everything around it in the dark interior was aware; they’d seen the cartilage slowly crushed out of existence, the nerves caught between bones, the rim of the pelvis distorting.  They felt, before I did, my body lurching.

And for years they tried to help.

Now everyone can go back to normal.  And start to welcome the titanium stranger.

Hipbone, older than my own mind!  You formed with me in the womb.  There was a time, around week 25, when you were near my mouth.  We were swirled in there, and I was curled to you.

We came out into the bright world together.  The antibodies in your marrow kept me safe.  You took a pounding when I was a goalie diving.  I blame you for my lack of dancing ability.  And it was you who whispered the right words to me when I knelt to propose.

There was always a connection between the flick of my eyes scanning and the marrow flowing; between the marrow flowing and my saliva forming.

It was sad when you wore down.  The team immediately felt it, and I, the greater good, felt it, became limited.  It was poignant to know that genetic destiny rotted you from within, that inner weather had carved you, beautiful but paper-thin.

Yesterday, we sat by a calm pond.  For a while I took you on my lap.  We watched two Canadian geese glide through thick silver water.  Sun on the bare trees, the reeds.  I know you don’t want to leave.  I’m sorry.  But I can’t put you before me anymore.  I can’t sacrifice my knee, all the way on the other side of my body!  I have to protect my lower back, from itself.  They would all keep carrying you, till they gave out too.

Remember that pond, and the brook flowing out of it.  Just like that you’ll flow away.  Rest, don’t try to make the medical waste walk.  Just rest with all the loyal servants.  And realize: new thing, you are intact!  Meanwhile, the greater good lives on, the greater good walks on, faster and painlessly!

Who was that person?  What did it feel like to be him?  This I can’t say.

I can only give the perspective of the 4-year-old boy he held in his arms, and danced around to ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’.

There was death to come for him much later, and trauma for me in the next few years, trauma he softened by making me bacon and eggs, by hitting fly balls so I had to run and dive.

In this world, he sat in the diner, in a black mesh tank top and teal sweatpants, eating a toasted bran muffin with butter.

In the upper worlds, he fills a doorway with warmth and light, warmth and light pouring out.

You are what’s kept me going.  You are every positive word that comes out of my mouth.

The richness in this world–I saw it first on the top of your dresser:  brewer’s yeast, bee pollen pellets, fascinating rubbery vitamin E, iron, garlic…

You’re getting dressed in the late afternoon, to go into New York to the Academy, sweating a bit in your dress shirt.

Now you’re deep into Alzheimer’s, all your diplomas in a box.  I’m playing with your beautiful white hair.  Even then, with your barrel chest, you give me a bear hug.

Do you need anything now?  I doubt it.  But let me give anyway.  May all those hugs, and all those times I played with your hair, reach you in the upper worlds, a thousand times amplified.   So within God’s embrace, for a second, you smile a different smile.

The grass grows very green and thick; it pours from your grave.  Not surprising at all.

The mystery of the living room window, the membrane.

The clouds right now are the Pillars of Creation.

Above a shaggy horizon of tropical trees–shapes of hydrogen from deep space!

Heat beyond our conception, surrounded by absolute zero…

*

Miami, in a heat wave.  There’s no going out in the day.  Sun-blasted streets.  Ocean hotter than blood.  Fish dying.

We’re lucky to live in a bubble–with AC, supplies, work.

A biosphere.  In the big window, masses of trees.  Continued in here by plants.  By you, moving from room to room.

The sun and trees, with their roots in still-wet earth, interact.  You breathe, speak, laugh…

The window somehow keeps out the heat, lets in the light.  Keeps out, I think, the silence of the melting tar.

We’ve evolved to handle the chilled air on our bare skin. 

Delicate creatures, comfortable only at 76 *F.  Moaning otherwise.  Feeling infinite gradations within that one degree.

Music plays in the dome.

News of the world.  War, hate.  Families grieving.  I have a membrane to let in a taste of this, screen out the rest.  You, less so, are crying.

The rooms are harmonious.  But the candles scare me, the naked flames.  The knives scare me, the naked blades.

In room 3, you’re working.

Looking up from my work, I’ve been tracking the sun’s progress.  It’s now quite low.

A green parrot lands on the palm in the window.  Flies off into heat waves, like Noah’s dove; does not return…

The sun is now pink!  A perfect disc, etched, with no glare. 

You come with me to the window; holding hands we watch it touch the trees, sink into their green jelly.

It’s time to go out, in the so-called cool of the evening.  Into air like oozing fur.  The beast has found water, and shade. Shivers with pleasure, which we feel as breeze.

Other domers, in doorways, test the air.  Creep outside.  Across the street, surrounded by industrial fans, people are gathering for a drink.  Chilled wine, frosted beer mugs.  We join them.