“Ah, can I do – birch trees
And two diamond pick axes,”
Cries my grandson, “fifth row
That’s pretty neat,” he says of
The vista on his father’s phone
That he nabbed early this morning
And the three of us – grandchild,
That lively phone and its games
And panoramas that deliver
Trees and stars and flying sheep on race tracks,
We’re out on the porch and I’m
Looking at my screen too, this life,
A leaning little chorus of tiger lilies
Inclining toward us, the grass deep green
From last night’s hard rain and clearly
Now in need of cutting — “level four,”
He calls out as he’s conquered
The zombies and pterodactyls that had
Invaded his screen as I am
Also trying to bat away how
Arizona is doing, which is not well
And also not a zombie of course
And I have nothing against Arizona
And even have nine cousins there
And counting and wish them all well
Yet I dearly want spiky Arizona
Off my screen this morning
So I rotate my head and incline –
Now here’s the tree canopy of sugar maples,
Cirrus clouds, the gutter with
What looks like lettuce growing out of it
Yes, I have three hundred and sixty degrees
Every bit as arresting as my grandson’s
When he calls out this time, “I’m at level eleven,
Sixty-six points, but, oh no, the red means
I’m going to die, swiping to the left so fast,”
He answers that’s what it means to die
Because, mea culpa, every time he dies in the game
I ask him what he means
Hoping, I guess, for some wisdom I’ve lost
Or likely never had,
And he seldom answers –
Who can blame him – except to say
Something about losing the game
And I’m fairly confident I’m not
Going to die either this nearly
Perfect morning, as both our screens
He says have enough percentage – he has 52,
He reports, which is enough to keep going
I don’t know my precise percentage but I’m
Going to keep going too although I know
There are people in Arizona
Whose screens are off
Although their signals still are coming through
Here because my grandson now calls out, “Play,
Play” when he senses my attention has lagged
Or turned away from him altogether
And even from the tomatoes ripening nearby
In their slatted buckets, and all I am
Suddenly thinking about is Arizona
And how they do the testing in all that heat
And are there those giant daunting
Saguaros outside the ICUs
And the emergency wings?
They’re everywhere in Arizona
And do the elderly see them
Outside their windows
As they breathe their last?
Huge green arms
Extending their spiky embrace
As if to say
Come this way
God, I hope not!
And I am staring off
To where Arizona might be
If you keep going over the hedge
And across the yard
But you don’t want to go there now
Nobody wants to go to Arizona
“So play with me,” the child orders, “Play,
And put down your notebook and play,
Ice cream, Pac-Man,” the child says,
“There you’ve got two pennies and
Two lives left and sixteen hundred
And twenty points, and that’s pretty much a lot
Now play, play, press it,” he demands
And a rooster calls out from the phone
Or maybe it’s a coyote
And, thank you, child, my screen goes blank
Along with all of Arizona
And we begin.