Tell me how to be sad,
little human,
awaking from a hundred year slumber.
You know,
a few things have changed since you last woke.
People don’t tell stories like they used to.
People don’t stand around and chit chat on the corner
like they used to,
lend some change for bread on Sundays
like they used to,
talk to the people who grow the wheat,
bake the bread.
Or so I’ve been told.
Folks speak to screens, now.
Yeah, I know. What?
Imagine that television they had just come up with
when you were born.
Now, imagine
one you can hold in your hand, carry in your pocket;
one, you can place on your lap. Lug around in a bag.
There are many types.
Words, colors, voices
come out, tell us to buy this, think that.
Yesterday I bought four pairs of sneakers,
and five sweaters in different colors.
People still pray, just like you learned.
Some go to church, to mosque, to temple.
Afterwards, we go home on the subway,
the bus, Uber (think, taxi – connected
to a pocket screen).
We all stand, sit, wait. We all watch our screens.
My mom, you know– she’s not as old as you.
She met my father at work, seventeen years old.
Pulling pranks and eating turkey sandwiches
on lunch breaks outside Rockefeller Center.
When she felt happy, they talked,
swung their heads back over the bench and laughed.
And when she felt sad, they sat, quiet, sometimes
looked into each other’s eyes, and laughed.
That was forty years ago.
Yesterday, I dolled out one of my small screens,
one you can touch right on the glass with your finger,
and go on this thing called: “The Internet.”
It’s like…another world, built into each screen.
I press down my finger and enter that world,
and hand the screen over to my mom.
You can ask this other world any question,
present any need, and it promises an answer,
each and every time. Did you ever know of anything
so dependable one hundred years ago, friend?
Well, anyway, I press my finger down on the glass
and show my mom something like Uber, but instead
of taxis it’s attached to faces. Well, to people.
Presumably people looking to date, to trade stories,
to share a sandwich on a park bench.
My face is there, too.
There are hundreds, thousands of faces on the screen,
and I taught her how to swipe her finger to the right
if she liked what she saw, and to left if she didn’t.
I’ve been doing it on and off for seven years.
It was fun: my mom, sitting on the couch, sliding
back and forth between the faces in one world,
my laughter in the next,
my dad lounging on the couch to my left,
watching the television (it’s mounted on the wall).
We went on like that for almost an hour.
My dad’s eyes slowly drifted shut, my laughter died,
yet my mom moved just as briskly, a salsa dance
over the screen, her eyes hooked, naming reasons
for each like and dislike.
My mom, entering this fun world
I so often had to enter alone. How lucky!
But after 10 minutes, I admit, I was feeling bored.
After 20, tired. And at minute 40, hovering above
my mom and that beautiful, glowing screen,
I felt a pang of sadness, discomfort, longing.
I reached for my pocket, like I usually do
when I feel this way,
like an itch on my back I can’t reach alone.
But there it was: my screen, staring back at me,
in the corner of my eye, in my mother’s hands.
So, yeah, I’m really glad I met you.
That you happened to unfreeze today.
What do you do when you feel sad, my friend?
Can you teach me?
February 2, 2020
Reaching Joy 