How a sky takes its fingers

across a globe, pointing

to blue-crop blueberries

for refuge in fog, making

preserves or a pancake mix

from orchard heart, white

in spring, pink in winter—

& miller’s stone for grinding

from Great Lakes’ waterwheel

of syncopation in hard times,

trying a heritage of belts & gears,

taking corn down to predecessors

of soft shake, mixing in your fingers

like buttered cornbread crossed

with watermelon cut from the knife

of merchants & loggers: always w/

a pocketknife, young man, they say,

w/ an emerald-green handle, for a sky

of growers & farmers slicing thru

a butcher’s cut, smoking into the bones

like airtight stoves or pails for water,

clocks of seamless nickel, floral oilcloths,

flannel-lined caps, & handles for plows,

settling us onto a novelty blanket

of ephemera, flimsy newsprint

promulgating dreams, w/ saliva

on the pages, as our own invention.