mercury fields

for Phil

There is a season for naïve attachment. It is October.
At night, the earth wrinkles behind a warehouse
in which the pine is planetary and the flood flood-light.
Lots of knots of sap. The nurse-wounds are savory
and outgrown: such as was world-weary us—
a sallow mode bringing out the moon
and bringing out the bone in his face to whom
I thought to affix my love. We are cosmic and dear,
moving deniably future into blushing agendas
of fantasy and house—each day a little elsewhere,
suggesting that we aren’t—yet—here—we are.

–ALEC HERSHMAN