Passing On

As my blood cells leave my heart, they pulse through my arteries, with each beat of my heart. My red blood cells carry oxygen to my outermost limbs; they are red because they are carrying my hemoglobin that is carrying my oxygen. They pulse, turn blue, and they loop back to my heart; they are blue because they still have my hemoglobin but they are depleted of my oxygen. My white blood cells should rush to eat away at bacteria; they are white because they lack hemoglobin and oxygen. My white blood cells aren't for carrying oxygen through my body; they should be there to help heal me.

With each pulse of my blood cells through my body, my heart beats. Beats a red beat, red as my flesh, red as the flesh of an old Oregon grizzly--he's been hiding out for decades since people thought the grizzlies were gone. And his clawed paw swipes in time to the river rushing by, white as god's whispers fallen as frost on morning pine needles. And the frost glistens with each wink of the sun through soughing boughs, pirouetting soft, soft as I wander on the wings of winnowed sun flakes. I dip, I pitch, I twirl. I dip, I pitch, I twirl. I dip, I pitch I twirl to land, glistened, in dry packed dirt.

I reflect, kaleidoscope-like, with each tilt of his head to block the sun, un-block the sun through the clearing in the forest. I glisten up at him and he nods in time to my glistening. He nods, he smiles, he sits down. He nods, he smiles, he begins to play. He starts with a pulse, with a beat--a beat, straight and intricate as my blood cells pulse, pulsing through my body. And my heartbeat beats in time to his pulsing drum, as he turns his neck up, blithely, to January sun. And eyes closed, seeing the point where red, orange, pink converge, he beats the beat of the Earth. And my heartbeat beats in time to the Earth, as I decompose, to become one with this Earth.