[Mercury]  

One will learn to hate the sideways the squares of there fold
as if the wind is waiting upstairs until
the last edge of the paint evades us  

one will buy hats to hide in this town
and never admit to arrive
in a stand of torn screens and autumn warding  

and will the certain fields to know why to come
and flatten with compass pull
and one makes morals of lines
to wrap like fleeing hearths around you  
 

[Theresa]  

but lift now from paper and walk the near edge of the world  

under the creased thirst of wept awnings and their older names
one steps from galleries of sawdust and caramel into uncharted air  

paint how along each lane there has beckoned you
and laden one's undoing with cougars inscribed on rockets  

and how one and there are in a mural of banished distance
wearing enmities and flour and weariness and salt
and resting brightly on the place where knowing alights  

there is a present tense of away that never falls on canvas maps
and only one and there are lulling it to see  

and the way these streets brush into leaves and foyers
is the way there is shading into you  

and how far can it be if you can walk there  
 

[White Oak]  

and then one has memorized boards enough and tendered excuses
that the year comes through the chair rungs and into our house
and we have made welcoming angles of our tables and ourselves  

each truce of there is a spark of lengthening cords
set into one in the sillworn history of crowded dreams
one has painted the weight of these doors apart and then together  

trusted the empty roads to remember why you've come
and imparted you with gravity's flair
and one makes bedrooms of signs
to have swayed like earths below you  

and one day there carried them.  
 

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