Blackbird ArchiveSif Mons & the Messenger Birth Star
It’s the indigo saliva and methane
wrung with the goose’s neck, a 19th Century
printer with his loose apron
leaves the perfect thumbprint
in the snow of the goose breast.
That night, with a loaf of bread
and an armful of crayon flowers, he
sidesteps the sweep’s rain
of ashes. His wife
has made a yellow pudding.
He has inked three pages of young
Keats’ Endymion. His head
aches. An insolvent tooth,
small brass pliers focusing on it.
The bliss of the night churning
its poor plasma and smoke— a draft
down the barn’s aisle
where he stands to piss
admiring the new glistening foal,
thinking how easeful it is
being a modern man with a sack
of cabbages and pork and an early winter sky
clear past the fallen linden bridge
and the north fork in the road
with a small dark cloud
and a white thumbprint in it.
