A boy plays pinball.
A boy grows flippers and a launch pad
and sets into still life:
A Flower Vase in Bar Lighting
or A Fruit Basket Sets a New High Score.
After school a boy leans his backpack against a wall,
gains open-water balance, glides out
to the shoal of himself and plays pinball.
From the machine emerges the art of recycling,
the vanishing magic of exchange:
quarters into the arcing free-float
of a silver ball in transit, his synapses’
snaky response. Translates his body
into points, points into proof of cause
and effect. If he were a game show
he would be the wheel in motion,
would call it For Amusement Only.
Would demonstrate with concision
what extends from the fingertips,
what, when tilted, complies.
A boy is a collision
careening through a light-up display
that halos his plate-glass reflection,
buoyant amid a garland of elastic bumpers.
His quarters a coin-box splash in the concluding
pool of transaction: wood and metal
and the lickity-split of buzzers,
points of contact flickering
in the slipstream of final score.