On our first date, my wife Myshell introduced me to a board game we’ll be discussing here. Let’s pick up our chat after today’s poem …

Circular game pieces
scattered like constellations
across tan cardboard,
she smirks at me,
velvet bag in right hand,
absently rolling next move
between fingers.

The game is called Pente,
Greek named variation
of Asian variant,
didn’t stop with Go,
trademarked in 1977,
found while teaching
scions of battered women
elements of education.

Now she’s like a
drunken wizened master,
trash talking
with sly smiles,
sweeping my most
strenuous strategies
off the board with ease.

This ain’t Scrabble,
which feels like my native land
this isn’t even
cutthroat considerations
of chess, Risk or Monopoly,
using logistics and
focused willpower
to obliterate opposition.
This is more like
dancing about architecture,
alien concepts
looking for places to land
on my inhospitable mind.

She wins
again,
but says I improved,
maybe not even mocking me
this time.
I marvel at mental machinations
far afield of my own,
just as brilliant,
just as dangerous
as capable of beauty and horror.

That’s just about right.

”I Was Told There’d Be No Math”
By Hannibal Tabu

I still don’t think I’ve ever beaten her.

Three more days, y’all …

Playing (Music): “Running After You” by Milly July

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2012 at 12:11 pm and is filed under creativity, culture, gratitude, napowrimo, poetry, wife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.