They say the blue spinal fluid of the horseshoe crab could hold
the cure for cancer. Imagine them, their spike tails strapped skyward,

leaking not the ocean but its color. . .
With the flatness of the ocean floor, this relative of the spider —

this non web-spinning cousin—doesn’t know how to be inverted. Or bled.

Exoskeletoned and the one eye reading ultraviolet — beyond
our sense of daily reasoning. Imagine its focus fixed on the hygienic

lamps beyond where god still creates the universe: aids, dementia, the next polio…
They say the trick to science is to love investigation without

Losing the sense of awe.

Here, in the room with your body just gone of breath, before
the sheet is pulled finally over your eyes and your body

gurneyed away, we take turns feeling the last of your living
heat, as if there was a cure to how

we are supposed to live with the absence of love.