At the end of the night,

when a nervous, maternal, 
                eternal God must
                snuff out the stars for 
                fear of a treacly factory fire, strewn 
 
in that last frail gasp of darkness 
grasping at what’s to be swept beneath
giggly pink gone proudly gouging blue;
 
you just might feel them,
cocked beneath burned out feathers 
                                of leathery Cygnus, tying
Orion’s black, dry-rotted buskins together to
sling against crinkling threads of the shriveling
firmament singed into blistering licorice,
reeking of cherry-streaked tresses and tar—
 
the line cooks weighing their
tallied up burns and scars against
pigeons and cormorants chiseled from
silvery surges stripped from diminishing
cherries, like sinew uncoils in smoke. 
                 Like seizing stars,
They’ll wheeze now a glib Finnish angry men’s choir
that drunken Sibelius must’ve mistaken for
swan-shaped smears seen summoning
snow from a salt flat.