I hold a molded plastic femur in my hands like a hilt or club or rifle, looking down
then aiming
its long engineered shaft at the column of a tree reaching down into the earth
but also reaching up
into the pocket of the sky. With the tips of my fingers I feel the architecture
and dream
of when God dreamed up my femur in the mountain cathedral caverns of his mind
in between two pillars,
both rooted into the geology of the cave and rocketing up to support the dome
of the cavern sky—
then I press, with a finger or two, beneath my skin surface, through the thickness of layers
of epidermis and dermis,
of fascia and muscle, past nerve endings to find the linea aspera, like a horizon
or a mountain ridge line,
and touching the greater trochanter, an anchor for tendons and muscles: the hope
of forward movement
through space and time and I think of my daughters, two sleeping bodies, floating,
in a sense, in space
as the earth glides its way through a kind of emptiness being pulled by the sun, their femurs, unbroken, busy with bustling
osteoclasts and osteoblasts making and unmaking their bones. My femur a slim pillar
of milk and marrow
was once threatened by a man’s head and helmet that came smashing in and my femur gave just enough, like bamboo;
it did not break. I bend the model femur like a bow—the plastic gives only a little.
Then I think
of the manufacturing plant and the man whose job it is to press the button that shoots
the composite goo
into the metal cast, probably taken from a cadaver dug up a couple hundred years ago;
in the realm of windowless
repetitive innovation he breathes the fractal air of shards of steel and security.
I stand and walk.
There it is, my femur, rooted into my foot and branching into the pocket of my pelvis,
this great transmitter
of force; the lines of stress of the boney matrix refuse to meander but map out
this life of adapting.
This near flawless bastion of blood and citadel of my leg, only the occasional
pause to thank its creator—
How many miles have you taken me? How many blows have you saved me from?
How long you've held me up.
