If less boon than stigma,

at birth it appears

rising above the horizon

of the left brow,

like a small red sun—

the signifying mark

that for the island race

of Luggnagg

confers

a life unpunctuated by death.

At the first blush of puberty,

like spring itself,

it turns green, swelling in size,

an emerald catkin

waving statically

from the forehead's sinister meadow.

Then in twice that amount of years

it appears blue,

a sky-colored or oceanic hole

that threatens to drink up time

like rain, almost drowning

the lucid score of summers

that remain,

until finally, ripening toward

blackness, turning the color

of coal—

the nevus of immortality

reduced from pink diacritic

to microbruise,

but never healing, though

it has centuries to do so

unperturbed by the inability

to die—

the dot flares briefly,

enjoying, like some penumbral

lamp, a last bit of wick

before the long and perpetual

fade to winter.