Bear cubs incubate while the mother is in hibernation. They emerge into the world of the den and her vast folded softness, to grope and squeeze and touch noses and suckle. All the while the steel gray sky and savage winter storms press in upon them.

......................................................................

He is dying - metastases in his thigh, his lungs, his brain perhaps - not having made it quite to eighty. He knew it when he dreamed about the strap breaking as he tried to play the saxophone. Now I am dreaming of a young man, still dying, but with a head full of hair and a sparkle in his eyes, grabbing me mid-waist and whirling us into a dance.