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.