–—It’s three months since his birth and the globe
of his head, hairless, rests in my palm,
–—positioned toward the stars that are not stars
but satellites, or sundry aircraft, objects
–—unidentifiable but certainly artificial, drifting
in the black expanse. Caedmon couldn’t sing,
–—or didn’t want to, until the urge came
upon him in a dream. My son shifts this way
–—and the flowers return. He mouths
my index finger. Beneath a sky cloaked
–—in the polluted glow of city light, I stare up
at imagined engines, listen for the incessant hum
–—emanating from gunmetal, or an analgesic buzz
bleating from some malfunctioning bulb.
–—Floating shapes on the retina—I’m seeing
spots—mime the languid movement
–—of objects in orbit: smelted aluminum,
bolted and soldered, aimless in gravity’s axis,
–—where sometimes things maintain their distance
and sometimes blast
—————–—to smithereens. This late in the life
–——of the species or the night—my son nods off
in the crook of my arm. A documentary rolls:
–—stars glint according to the motion
of the wind. They only twinkle
–—from the ground. Compound this with the fact
that we are looking at the past and the view grows
–—increasingly unstable. I strive to measure
distance, the time it takes my eye to make
–—its rounds about the room. Neon digits flash
their slow progression on the blinking face
–—of an electric clock. Silence
———————————–—smolders, widens
in the cogitating substance
—————–—slung between the caverns
–—of my ears. I listen for the dog, her fractious
cadence. “She’s not the brightest
–—tool in the shed.”
—————————–—Inching by gradation,
passive in the circulating
———————————–—dome of night,
–—systems slow, contracting from the flaming
cause of their rotations. Lightward,
–—the earth turns. The baby draws his lips
into a limp suckle. In the window, a ficus
–—photosynthesizes, every moment making sugar
as the photons slap its skin. The world
–—is getting hotter. The baby rubs his cheek
against the flannel of my sleeve. Bathed in kitchen light,
–—its gray glow barely evident above the slanted sill,
his mother scrapes the evening plates, the weekend’s
–—bottles piled in a corner of the sink. I pull
the blanket to his chin, regulate the pulsing
–—rhythm of his blood. Outside, birds erupt,
their dull roar—a circus of song—rising
–—in the widening gray. Finches lift, their hectic
bodies flailing in the pale immensity, where
–—sinking clouds at first maintain their shape,
dissolve against the tinted fire of the sky.
John James is the author of The Milk Hours (Milkweed) and three chapbooks, most recently Extinction Song (Tupelo), winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Award. Recent poems appear in New England Review, The Hopkins Review, Ninth Letter, and Poem-a-Day.
Photo by Yianni Mathioudakis, obtained from Unsplash+.
