We are zapping Lego Star Wars’ characters.

Patiently, she shows me how to handle

the console – its buttons and paddle.

How kind she is about my ineptitude!

She commentates throughout. I am a convert.

This is no more solitary than reading –

with a work-out of psycho-motor skills!

But she is passive watching ‘Ninjago’ –

its violence, rudeness, a lack of irony,

a plenty of sarcasm – and its Lego

manikins: humour bypass, prosthetic hands,

stunted vocal range, corporate creatures

stumping through their weatherless universe

in full-length feature advertisements.

She begins to recover,  trying to

balance a peacock feather on her palm.

We suggest the park where she has learned to climb

a holly tree – up inside the branches,

thick with dark leaves and bright with berries

in the mellow, October weather.

She scoots through the park gates before us

but swiftly reappears. “Grandma, Grandpa, look!”

and points. The autumn’s leaves are spread on paths

and grass like golden snow.