Lessons on Animal Behavior

1.
This isn’t about Julius Solters, his blindness,
or his son. I read “his life returned to darkness”

as figurative, when learning about his youth
leading pack mules through blackened coal mines.

So maybe his dream of baseball makes sense,
even though it led to his blindness, and even if

it is true Julius never laid eyes on his son, Stevie,
a boy he could have known as sound and shape

between his hands. I wouldn’t want to be blind
in this world, but I do want to know some

creatures by their sound, their breathing,
their face between my hands. I imagine

parenting a child like this is like sculpting.
But who knows if Julius ever held his child

in a way that led to knowing him.

2.
An errant move in routine play—a ball,
pre-game—put the father’s eyes into darkness.

Also, there was Julius’s nickname: Moose.
Moose. In literature, and in life, doesn’t an animal

often stand in for something else? Like that elephant
on the TV, lying on its side, two bloodied gaps

where its tusks once were. That elephant cleared paths
in the woods with tusks meant to lift and protect,