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A Drop Of Mercury

Great-Aunt Helen
orbits Emily Way
twenty years of houses, friends
suddenly unfamiliar

she keeps the vertigo
to herself (a drop
of mercury)
walks the shopping trolley
remembers flying
—her first Piper Cub
at 35—

and a canoe
on the Amazon
of which her grand-
daughters are ignorant

looks at her life
star cooling at the
wrong end
of the telescope

long nights in a room
only gravity listening.