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.
By David Selzer