FOR JASON STOCKLEY DODGE
All day, relentless,
Jason, just turned six,
captures me in play:
How about if I’m Jean-Luc Picard
Commander of the starship Enterprise
and you’re Q,
that mischievous guy who knows everything
and just sort of popped out of a black hole;
and a bunch of Cardassians and maybe some
space monsters
have locked on to us with a tractor-beam
and are pulling us into a gamma transducer
that’s robbing our power–
oh no, our shields are down to 60%!–
and let me tell you
our butts are in trouble,
so how about this time-just once-
can we set our phasers on KILL?
Or how about
I’m Rin-Tin-Tin
and I’m running through the woods
and how about
you’re a bad guy,
a real mean criminal,
and you go hide behind that fir tree
and you shoot Rinty when he runs by
and Rinty rolls and rolls down this hill like
he’s dead,
and just lies there,
very, very, very still,
but the thing is
you missed,
Rinty is faking, he fooled you,
and when you walk over
Rinty attacks Rar-rar-rarrrrrr!
and you try to shoot him
but Rinty crunches your arm
so you shoot yourself instead and stagger around
until you just fall over deader than a doorknob.
How about that?
Or how about
you’re just walking along dah-de-dah
and you see these two little dinosaurs
caught in this basketball net
so you call 911–
and I am Rescue 911–
and I send a fire truck with a ladder and Fireman
Bob driving with his dog Chief on the back,
plus I send an ambulance,
and I better send another fire truck,
and Fireman Bob rescues the little dinosaurs
and rushes them to the hospital with the siren on–
and how about you’re the doctor
but you’ve never operated on baby dinosaurs before
so I have to show you how
and I fix up their spinal cords and their little hearts
and they’re OK now; they’re gonna be fine . . .
Until I want to yell
HOLD IT! STOP!
How about
if I’m Lothario the Magnificent,
an alchemist magician,
and I can focus my wild imagination so powerfully
I’m able to condense all the women I’ve ever loved
into one?
And how about I can imagine with such passionate
clarity
that she is real, right here and now, completely,
and how about if
you’re just a little kid, fast asleep,
dreaming of the starship Enterprise
gliding deeper into deepest space
toward who knows what unimaginable adventures
and illuminated moments of being–
so fast asleep not even a Klingon laser strike
could wake you–
and she smiles and whispers,
“You and me, sweetheart–
how about it?”