The Milk Hours. John James

in an aluminum fence.

      They glistened in the sun,

      as they always do. You

      could say their vines shuddered.

      —

      Photographed by Isaac

      Roberts, 1887, again

      in 1899, the galaxy, the ruler

      of man, the pearling

      spiral takes its name from

      the area of sky in which it appears.

      Sussex, England, retrograde motion.

      The daughter chained to a rock.

      —

       We forget rapidly what should be forgotten. The universal

       sense of fables and anecdotes is marked by our tendency to forget

       name and date and geography. “How in the right are children

       to forget name and date and place.”

      —

      Pained loveliness—the sonnet

      sweet fetter’d. Morning, still, couched

      in narrative—carrots taken

      from my palm. Horse’s muzzle,

      its silken touch, teeth against the skin.

      The eye sees the mind sees

      crushed petals in the pestle.

      All parts are binding.

      —

      Constellations—huge

      man wearing a crown,

      upside down with respect

      to the eclipse. The smaller

      figure next to him sitting

      on a chair. A whale

      somewhere beneath it.

      —

      By ear industrious—attention

      met—misers of sound

      and syllable. See kale, see

      rows of collard stalks—think

      Cassiopeia. Think arrogant

      and vain. Greek models, sea

      monster Cetus, the errant study of.

      —

       I shall ere long paint to you—as one can without

      canvas—the true form of the whale—

      my parts are all binding—

      as he actually appears to the eye—

      I wonder, now, how Ovid did it—I pass that matter by.

       Poem for the Nation, 2016

      When it’s a weapon, when it flies,

      the flag is a striped

      idea flapping on a pole. It makes a fine cape,

      my daughter says. She wears it on the Fourth.

      I say the pledge but never know

      if I mean it or I don’t. The alders bleed,

      the shot trees on the Capitol lawn

      bend in the wind.

      Heat collects

      in the quarried stone

      of white buildings. “This is what

      an ailing empire looks like,” you say.

      I agree, watching mallards

      spin on the Potomac. They paddle

      on the surface

      of the reflecting pool, webbed feet

      beating in assembly,