The Tourists

In yellow fluorescent sneakers
& sweat stained golf hat, he walks beside
a woman whose lilac tinted silver hair
spills over a black backpack.

Behind them, two more in batik shawls
& earphones, precious stone
earrings & nose rings,
swing skin bags & handkerchief hems.

The cave paintings on the walls of my mind fade
under this rough carbon-layered breath,
spores & salts that ride along
land over my primitive ocher hand prints.

I am paid in berry juice:
purple & orange & red.
The tourists collect an understanding
that water is simple, cyclic, constant,

that rocks are in a rush to dissolve,
& the music and dance of the volt
are the only path from green-black deep
to tongue-numbing cry in our blue air.

Unlearning Alone

I couldn't have known the dog
had become blind until
set down on a dark bed

he'd walk right off the edge,
tremble and piss in a spasm's fit,
needing to be dead

but unable to get there.
Supposing it was the dog's own
darkness means there is something

more, perhaps another darkness.
Paper to write a sentence,
a table for the paper,

and outside the wooden walls,
the tables and chairs trace
their ancestors to the trees:

yes, the itch to cut is there, too,
the splitting that becomes science,
the climb which leads to flight.

There must be forests-
continents on planets
full of forests-

of what we'll build
into the furniture of love,
this pulpy inseparability

slowly grown and holding heat,
the rain rising up to a sky
so big it's both dark and light.