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.

It’s all one, and we see how it happens.  The tropical rain is pelting the trees, the grass, falling into the bay, water into water.  We open the window, and the smell of all that enters.

On other days, we see rain in the distance–low clouds, and spotlights of misty arrows connecting sky and earth, choosing the trees and water out there somewhere.

The undulating line of treetops is so easy to trace with our eyes.  Just one or two curves.  The treetops meet…empty space.  The air is tinted pale watercolor blue.

Can there be such a thing as an inviting wall?  The dense and healthy trees are reflected en masse in the bay, sometimes like a tide of green algae, but most often as shadow on silver.

And all this—trees, water, sky–we can grab in a ball with our fists, and cram into our mouths, shove into our skulls, decorate our bodies with it like war paint.  Or we can just gaze primly, or look vacantly up from our work.

Is it me, or is the palm tree in our window taller?  We see only the very top, 5 or 6 swaying fronds and the tip of the stem.  With the recent storms, has it all shifted upward, do we need to mark a new line for our boy on the sky?

Our boy with his messy hair.  We see only the top of his head, but it evokes everything, all our tenderness.  We keep him in sight, witness his life.  And the green parrots that perch, and blend, and look in at us…

I can’t take the parrots into the ball in my fist; it seems too violent.  But a few minutes later, when they’re gone, I can replace them with the memory, and mix that in– a new flavor.

We used to see only buildings.  Nothing could grow from those gravestones.  It rained but there was no sky.  And we, after a while, did not adapt.  We tried eyes with more upward range, retinas that detected the faintest green.  One year, nothing worked, and we were…failing.  Oh, this is what it feels like…

Now here, the few buildings are white and enfolded by trees.  They merge easily with the sky.  The eye accepts them.  In fact, they echo our white furniture, connect us, from deep in the room, to the horizon.

It’s all one.  This massive shot of juice in the window.  The view that brings us the day so we can’t miss out.  This softness that holds us.

There are certain things I know to be true, and I’m surprised I don’t receive more external confirmation:  dust and laundry never increase.  They just don’t.  And women never die.

No woman has ever died in the history of the world, especially not from a heart attack.  The Neanderthal women are among us, Helen of Troy, too.  The old lady who crept by us on the beach a few years ago, and smiled, is exactly the same now.

I asked my mentor, who spent a decade trying to get toilets for farmworkers in the fields, who spent his life fighting sweatshops, what kind of world he hoped to see.  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.  ‘A little better?’  I guess he wasn’t sure of much.

Me, I cherish our nightly journey of sleep.  The bed stretches out on all sides forever.  You’ve dressed in a dove-gray sleep mask and pink foam ear plugs.  We lie on our sides, turned toward each other, holding hands, letting go sleepily, finding hands again…

We’re going to the same place, right?  I know this to be true.

No?  How can we go to different places?  That’s just sad, and scary.  How can your dream be only in your head?  It should flow through the synapses of our hands.

Are you lonely in your head?  The dream fills everything. 

I rarely dream of you, but so what.  The journey of sleep, the journey of sleep!   Who turns their light out first?  The last bit of light shines on the pure white comforter, and the months of darkness begin.   We face each other.  I’m so lucky.  How many decades I traveled alone, or holding onto a pillow.

We smile, and rise, and start to fly through the warm wispy clouds before full sleep.  We fly like Superman on his side.

Now our souls are playing together.  Now they separate.  You go investigate over there, I’ll investigate over here, and we’ll compare notes when our phones go off.

Fuck that.

The situation is wrong, and sleep is deeply flawed.  When someone is after you with a gun, I need to be there.  Your heart races, you panic, and I don’t even know it!  This is like a husband bound to a chair while…

Does the lump of me comfort you in any way?!

But you often experience bliss in your dreams.  Well, that’s a good thing, no complaints there.  Sweet dreams.  That’s all I can say.  I try to say the rest through my hand.  I have to let you go.  I pray you’ll be ok.  I pray you’ll come back to me.  Yet it’s all so cozy.