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!

What we know for sure, what we can feel in our bones, is that it all took place in the desert, and the coastal plain and hill country. 

In the Jezreel Valley and Jericho and Jerusalem.

Among the tribes of the Canaanites.

When a god was carried from the south, from the wilderness.  A god of war and rain.

The shepherds brought their first lambs to be sacrificed on his altar. The farmers brought their first grain in early summer, their first fruits in fall.

The men were circumcised. 

Back before Ashkenazi and Ukraine, and pale skin and glasses.  Back before rabbis and bibles, before even the First Temple!

I was a Canaanite.  But not eating certain things.   

And you, who I sit with at brunch:  you were on line with me at our hilltop altar.  You lugged sacks of plums and lemons; I brought dates and persimmon, scraped from the rocky ground.

The blood of my lamb oozed onto the still wet blood of yours.

Who was our God?  Was he the god, even then, of love thy neighbor?  Of pay your farmhands?

There is no image of him up here.  Our minds work in the empty space.  Beyond the altar, the valley stretches out… 

Please bring rain so we can stay here.  Be with us, give us the advantage, as we fight for this valley.

Cleaning our knives and our hands, we stop for a moment to catch up, to kibbitz.  We share a local slang—the first Hebrew.